KS-Sen: Sebelius Could Win (If She Ran)

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (2/2-4, registered voters):

Kathleen Sebelius (D): 47

Todd Tiahrt (R): 37

Kathleen Sebelius (D): 48

Jerry Moran (R): 36

(MoE: ±4%)

Todd Tiahrt (R): 24

Jerry Moran (R): 19

Undecided: 57

(MoE: ±5%)

The race for the open Senate seat in Kansas looks to be Kathleen Sebelius’s for the taking, if she would just show up (and hopefully these numbers will pique her interest). Research 2000 finds that the Kansas governor leads both of her potential candidates by a double-digit margin. If anyone can break the sixty-plus years of Republicans having a lock on the Kansas senate seats, it’s her.

There’s one sort of generalized caveat here, though: Sebelius isn’t over the 50% mark here, and yet she’s extremely well-known (with a 56% favorable/37% unfavorable, almost everyone has an opinion of her), leaving me to wonder where that last few percent to put her over the top in this dark-red state are going to come from. With both Reps. Tiahrt and Moran much less-known (check out the undecided numbers on their primary), they seem to have the room to expand. While you can’t deny that Sebelius is in the driver’s seat here, this looks to be a much closer race in Nov. 2010 than the current gaudy numbers indicate. (Discussion is already well underway in conspiracy‘s diary.)

5 thoughts on “KS-Sen: Sebelius Could Win (If She Ran)”

  1. There’s one sort of generalized caveat here, though: Sebelius isn’t over the 50% mark here, and yet she’s extremely well-known (with a 56% favorable/37% unfavorable, almost everyone has an opinion of her), leaving me to wonder where that last few percent to put her over the top in this dark-red state are going to come from.

    I had thought the same thing.  But, after taking a closer look at the poll, it’s clear that Democrats, Republicans, and Independants/Others each make up roughly one-third of the undecideds (even though there are many fewer Democrats and Independents, they have a much higher rate of being undecided in the poll).  Thus, if undecided Democrats and Independents and Republicans break like their decided brethern, Sebelius would substantially increase her margin over the R candidates.  She has lots of room to get over 50% just with the undecided Democrats and Independents.

  3. Dem governors in Republican states don’t have that great of a track record of winning Senate seats, even when they’re popular.  Ben Nelson lost a Senate race to Chuck Hagel in 1996 (and Hagel was an unknown before the race started), and in 2000 barely prevailed over a pretty lackluster Republican.  And Nelson was pretty popular as governor.  Moran and Tiahrt (especially Tiahrt) aren’t exactly world-beaters, but Sebelius has a lot to overcome with Kansas’s natural Republican tilt.

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