Poll: No clear frontrunner in races for Kansas governor, U.S. Senate

With eight days until the election, neither the race for Kansas governor nor the race for U.S. senator has a clear frontrunner, according to the KSN News Poll conducted by Survey USA.

Both Republican incumbents trail their challengers by a thin margin.

Democrat Paul Davis leads Gov. Sam Brownback 46 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll, which was paid for by KSN-TV in Wichita. Independent Greg Orman has an even slimmer advantage, 44 percent to 42 percent, over U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts.

Davis’ and Orman’s leads fall within the poll’s margin of error of 4 percentage points.

“Most of these polls are within the margin of error. You do have a trend here of Davis pretty consistently – not always – in the lead,” said Patrick Miller, a professor of political science at the University of Kansas who studies polling.

“If you put a gun to my head and asked me to project on this today I would say Davis would win,” Miller said. He also favors Orman in the race for Senate, but said both races will hinge on turnout.

Libertarian Keen Umbehr draws 5 percent of the respondents in the governor’s race, with the rest undecided, according to the poll, while Libertarian Randall Batson draws 4 percent in the race for Senate.

Davis has led Brownback all year in the SurveyUSA polls and once held an 8-point advantage over the governor. The Brownback campaign has repeatedly questioned SurveyUSA’s accuracy.

The firm has been graded A for accuracy by FiveThirtyEight, a site that tracks competing polls.

In recent weeks the Davis campaign has aggressively pushed back against the narrative that Brownback has gained the momentum in the race.

The campaign has repeatedly touted its success in SurveyUSA’s polls. Chris Pumpelly, the campaign’s spokesman, denied that the most recent poll, which shows a 1-point gain for Brownback and a 1-point drop for Davis from two weeks ago, confirmed that Davis’ lead was slipping as Nov. 4 nears.

“It’s a poll that we’ve consistently been ahead in,” Pumpelly said. “We have been ahead every single time. … We’ve been putting our message out there consistently and clearly. Paul and Jill (Docking) believe in great schools and getting our economy moving in the right direction. We’ve got great momentum.”

SurveyUSA’s analysis states the momentum is on Brownback’s side.

Although the Brownback campaign has repeatedly questioned SurveyUSA’s accuracy, this week spokesman John Milburn had a different reaction. “We agree with Survey USA when they say ‘momentum is on our side.’ We are confident that we will win on Tuesday,” he said in an e-mail.

The Roberts campaign also expressed confidence despite trailing slightly.

“Pat Roberts is going to win this election. Kansans know a vote for Senator Roberts is a vote for a Republican Senate majority,” said Corry Bliss, Roberts’ campaign manager.

Orman’s spokesman, Mike Phillips, said, “Poll after poll shows Kansans know Washington is broken, and they know Senator Roberts is part of the problem.”

The secretary of state’s race is deadlocked at 45 percent apiece for Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the Republican incumbent, and former state Sen. Jean Schodorf, a Wichita Democrat.

“SurveyUSA has a history of being very accurate down ballot,” Miller said. “So for them to put that at 45-45 tells me that’s a real tossup at this point. … I think this is going to be a coattails race. I think that whoever is coming across the top in the governor’s race might drag their secretary of state candidate over.”

Marcus Williamson, Schodorf’s campaign manager, called it a “race to the finish” and said voters have a clear choice.

“They can choose either the partisan status quo that has been mired with personal agendas and wasted state tax dollars, or they can follow the Jean Schodorf way of working for all Kansans,” Williamson said in a phone call.

Kobach was not too worried about SurveyUSA’s results, saying other polls have shown him ahead.

“I just don’t put a lot of stock in their methodology,” Kobach said in a phone call. “But generally I would say as voters learn that I’m the candidate who wants to preserve our proof of citizenship requirement and she wants to get rid of it, I expect that most Kansans will vote for me in the end.”

The poll was conducted among 623 likely voters between Oct. 22 and Oct. 26.

This story was originally published October 28, 2014 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Poll: No clear frontrunner in races for Kansas governor, U.S. Senate."