A new Citizens United Political Victory Fund poll shows that six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) is slightly trailing his Tea Party challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel just a couple weeks from election day in Mississippi. The election is on June 3.
The poll, conducted by pollster Kellyanne Conway of the Polling Company, Inc., found that McDaniel is beating Cochran 43 percent to 39 percent, respectively. A third candidate, Tom Carey, has 3 percent of voters according to the poll, and 12 percent of voters are undecided.
Conway’s firm conducted the poll between May 14 and May 15, and it surveyed 505 likely Republican primary voters in Mississippi. The poll has a 4.4 percent margin of error, meaning McDaniel’s lead is so narrow it’s just inside the margin of error according to this data.
Top-line data that Citizens United Political Victory Fund released with the poll results shows that Cochran is losing even though his favorables are above 50 percent. A total of 56 percent of GOP primary voters think of Cochran as favorable, while only 31 percent view him unfavorably.
McDaniel, on the other hand, has 49 percent who view him as favorable, 19 percent as unfavorable, and 30 percent who either have no opinion or don’t know of McDaniel.
This poll comes just about six weeks after another public poll, from the Tea Party Express, showed McDaniel trailing Cochran 45 percent to 37 percent. A Human Events poll last December showed McDaniel and Cochran tied at 40 percent.
“Mississippi primary voters want new conservative leadership in the United States Senate,” Citizens United president David Bossie told Breitbart News. “That is why Chris McDaniel is well positioned to win on June 3rd.”
The poll was conducted before a 28-year-old blogger was arrested Friday night for entering Cochran’s wife’s residence at a Madison, MS retirement home to take a photograph of her.