Nobody is safe in primary politics. One recent demonstration of this hard fact is Congressman Ed Case’s primary challenge of the beloved U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Daniel Akaka.

But I have to admit I thought that Gabrielle Giffords was safe from a new big-time primary challenger as she looked to become the Democratic nominee in the race to take the Arizona congressional seat opening up thanks to the decision by Republican congressman Jim Kolbe not to run for reelection. She was doing everything right: lining up endorsements, raising lots of money.

Then newscaster Patty Weiss released some poll numbers as she jumped in the race. According to the inimitable Celinda Lake, Weiss is the stronger general election candidate when matched up against failed 2004 Republican primary challenger/Minuteman supporter Randy Graf. Weiss is even much more popular than Giffords among Democrats likely to vote in the general election (Weiss favorability: 65 percent; Giffords: 27 percent).

The poll struck me as interesting on a number of levels. First, why in the world was Weiss doing a general election survey in January when a titanic primary battle loomed? And second, what role did name recognition play in the Weiss showing given that Weiss was a popular newscaster?

Let’s look at name recognition first. I don’t have the topline results of the poll, so I’m going to make some guesses here. Owing to all her time on Tucson TV, let’s assume that Weiss’s name recognition among likely Democratic general election voters is 80 percent. Meanwhile, Giffords’ state senate seat only covers about a quarter of the congressional seat, so I would be surprised if her name recognition is above 30 percent. If those numbers are right, then fully 81 percent of likely voting Dems who know Weiss have a favorable view of her. Nothing to sniff at. However, Giffords’ standing is even higher: 90 percent. In other words, Weiss’s own poll suggests to me that once Democrats know Giffords, they love her. And given how well she is doing with the fundraising, Democratic voters in the district will get to know her.

As for the general election survey, my best guess is that Weiss wanted to test the waters before jumping in. Instead of doing a full-on primary election baseline poll which would cost her well over $20,000 - a tidy sum when you’re not sure you’re going to run - I think she decided to ask her pollster whether she could do something a little more economical. Maybe piggybacking onto a survey that the pollster was already doing in Arizona. Given that the pollster also works for Governor Napolitano and the Napolitano had the State of the State coming up, the pollster said sure, I’ve got something you can tag on to. Problem is, Celinda said, Janet doesn’t have a primary election coming up, so we’re only going to be testing general election voters. Still, Celinda continued, we could do an oversample in the congressional district, and see how you match up against the potential Republicans relative to the other Democrats in the race. And while we won’t be talking to enough Democratic primary voters to analyze the subgroups you need to create a campaign strategy, we will be talking to enough to assess the horserace between you and Giffords. And it will cost you a lot less than $20,000. A lot less than $10,000, even! And if it comes back positive, we could write a memo that will really help you with your fundraising.

Let’s be clear. I’m not sure than anything like this conversation took place. I don’t know that Napolitano did a poll in early January. A commenter on the Rum, Romanism and Rebellion blog says she (or he) was one of the respondents for the poll and doesn’t say anything about the poll being about Napolitano. Maybe Weiss jumped in with both feet and commissioned her own poll with a big sample of both Democratic primary voters and general election voters. But I doubt it. A poll like that done by top-notch pollster like Celinda would cost a lot of money - practically Bloomberg-type money. I think one way or another, Weiss did a cheap viability poll, liked what she saw and decided to get in.

But if my calculations are correct, while 80 percent of the Democratic voters that know Weiss think favorably of her as a newscaster, 90 percent of the likely Democratic voters that know Giffords like her as a legislator. And the election in September is not for newscaster, it’s for legislator.

Some of the other blogs talking about the race include Dr. Bob (who apparently thinks the poll closes the deal for Weiss), The Data Port, Daily Kos, AZ Congress Watch, Blog for Arizona, Spidel Blog and Blogizona.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 10:00 am and is filed under Arizona, Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.