Moran, Tiahrt poll almost equally

Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt are even in the race for the Republican nomination to fill Sen. Sam Brownback's open Senate seat, according to a new poll.

The KWCH 12 Eyewitness News scientific survey was conducted June 12 to 14.

Asked who they would vote for if they were to vote today, 40 percent of Kansans polled said they would vote for Moran and 38 percent said they would vote for Tiahrt.

Another 22 percent said they were undecided. The election is more than a year away.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Not surprisingly, Moran, 55, who has represented western Kansas in Congress since 1997, had the strongest support in western Kansas, where 61 percent of respondents supported him compared with 25 percent for Tiahrt.

Tiahrt, 58, of Goddard, who was elected to Congress in 1994, did the best in southeast Kansas, where he was favored by 58 percent of those polled compared with 30 percent who favored Moran.

Nearly a third of the voters in northeast Kansas said they were undecided.

SurveyUSA, which conducted the poll for KWCH, interviewed 1,500 Kansans -- 1,295 of whom are registered voters -- from June 12 to 14. SurveyUSA determined 453 of the people who were registered voters were likely to vote in the August 2010 Republican primary.