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Tuesday October 26, 2010
Capitol Hill newspaper's poll of local House race has Edwards down 12
By Michael W. Shapiro
U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, is trailing GOP challenger Bill Flores by 12 percentage points, according to a poll commissioned for the Washington, D.C.-based The Hill newspaper.
The Hill released the poll and nine others on districts represented by longtime Democratic incumbents at 10 p.m. Tuesday. The survey is the only publicly available independent poll commissioned on the race and the pollster is Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. (To read an article accompanying the polls: http://thehill.com/house-polls/thehill- ... incumbents)
The survey puts Flores up in the race 52 percent to 40 percent.
To this point the only polling in the race has come in the form of internal polls Edwards and Flores chose to release. Flores made public a survey showing him up 19 percentage points and more recently Edwards released a poll that showed him down four points but gaining from prior weeks.
Edwards has won in the conservative 17th Congressional District — home to former President Bush's Crawford ranch — by winning over Republicans and conservative-minded independent voters. The Hill poll shows Edwards trailing 37 to 48 percent among independents, and Flores with the support of all but 9 percent of Republicans.
On the key survery question in which respondents were asked how they would vote the options were: Edwards, Flores, "other," "would not vote," or "don't know."
Libertarian Richard Kelly of Morgan is running but his name was not included in the poll.
The poll also appears to under-sample people in the district who voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential race. McCain got 67 percent of the district's vote, making it tied for the most conservative House district represented by a Democrat. However, 59 percent of those surveyed said they voted for the Arizona senator.
About two-thirds of respondents said they disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing. Flores has been hammering Edwards for being too close to national Democrats including Obama.
Seventy percent of those surveyed said their feelings about Obama factored into their thinking about their vote in the mid-term election, where the president will not be on the ballot.
Finally, most respondents considered Edwards' experience in Congress a negative. So, what in most election cycles would be a positive — Edwards' seniority on several powerful committees and his record of bringing money back to the district — is playing against him, according to the Hill poll.
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