A new poll from Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund shows that Tea Party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel has seven-point lead over 36-year incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).
The poll, conducted by pollster George Birnbaum of GEB International who surveyed 600 likely GOP primary voters on May 14, shows McDaniel beating Cochran outside the 4 percent margin of error 43 percent to 36 percent.
The Tea Party group says this is a 30-point swing in favor of McDaniel since its last poll, conducted on April 2 with the same confidence level and same number of likely GOP primary voters, showed McDaniel losing to Cochran 28 percent to 51 percent, respectively.
“A 30-point ballot move in six weeks is rare, indeed,” Birnbaum said in a release. “Clearly, as more voters are tuning in to the race, and learning more about Chris McDaniel, and learning more about how Thad Cochran has lost touch with Mississippi values, they are moving away from Cochran and to McDaniel.”
Birnbaum added that the poll shows “a strong indication of McDaniel’s surge,” but he added, “perhaps more important is the fact that 80% of those with a favorable view of McDaniel say they plan to vote for him, against just 70% of those with a favorable view of Cochran who say they plan to vote for him.”
“Historically, incumbents who don’t win the votes of at least 80% of the voters who view them favorably don’t win,” Birnbaum said.
Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund exclusively told Breitbart News, too, that 68.5 percent of respondents said it was “unacceptable” when asked that “that despite Thad Cochran’s four decades as one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, Mississippi still ranks dead last in so many categories like education and median income.”
As such, McDaniel’s surge–as evidenced by this poll and another poll from Citizens United, where he is just inside the margin of error with a slim lead over Cochran–comes as he publicly embraced the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) pledge against amnesty and a massive increase in legal immigration instead pledging to help American workers find work. And it comes as McDaniel backed the “conservative reform agenda” of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), designed to offer proactive conservative policies that shrink government’s influence in people’s lives while getting them back to work and on the pathway to economic prosperity.
In the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund poll, Cochran’s favorable rating among GOP primary voters in the state slid significantly. Back in the April 2 poll, Cochran had a 64 percent favorable rating and a 21 percent unfavorable rating. In this new poll, Cochran’s favorable rating has dropped under 50 percent to 48 percent and his unfavorable rating has climbed to 32 percent. The Tea Party group notes in a press release this is a “27-point swing against him.”
McDaniel’s favorability in the April 2 poll 29 percent up against 10 percent unfavorable, but he has had a seven-point positive swing in this new poll. He now, according to the Tea Party group’s polling data, stands at a 44 percent favorable rating with an 18 percent unfavorable rating.