U.S. Senate General Election (Toomey vs. Specter)
Pat Toomey: 46 percent
Joe Sestak: 41 percent

U.S. Senate General Election (Toomey vs. Sestak)
Pat Toomey: 42 percent
Joe Sestak: 34 percent

By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com

A new poll from Quinnipiac University released Thursday shows Republican Pat Toomey back on top of incumbent Arlen Specter, leading the Democrat 46 percent to 41 percent.

Most polling this year has shown the former Lehigh Valley congressman beating his arch nemesis in a hypothetical matchup, but a Quinnipiac poll released early last month raised eyebrows when it reported Specter leading 49 percent to 42 percent.

Thursday’s survey, which was highlighted by a press release from the Toomey campaign, underscores the fact the longtime lawmaker might face a tough uphill battle in the fall. Just 36 percent of voters said they thought Specter deserved re-election, a number that has been as low as 25 percent in at least one other survey.

Toomey still faces a challenge to raise his name identification in the state: Sixty percent of voters don’t know enough about him to have an opinion, according to the poll.

“A Toomey-Specter race could continue swinging back and forth until November because most voters won’t begin to focus on it until after Labor Day,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “On paper, Sen. Specter is vulnerable in the general election because only 36 percent of voters say he deserves another term. But Toomey is so little known that the electorate is torn which way to go.”

The other Democrat in the race, Joe Sestak, trails Toomey in a hypothetical matchup 42 percent to 34 percent.

Read the full results here.

Tags: Arlen Specter for Senate, Pat Toomey for Senate

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 11:41 am and is filed under Front Page Stories. 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.