Polls: McCormick Leads Oz in Pennsylvania Senate Primary Race

Businessman David McCormick has an edge over celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, according to a pair of recent polls taken just prior to former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Oz.

One poll, conducted by the Pennsylvania-based Eagle Consulting Group, found McCormick ahead of Oz by seven points, per a memo of the poll released by the firm on Tuesday. The poll found McCormick receiving 18 percent support compared to Oz’s 11 percent support, while a plurality of respondents, more than 45 percent, said they were undecided.

Other candidates receiving single-digit support in the poll included former Trump administration U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands at nine percent, political commentator Kathy Barnette at nine percent, and real estate developer Jeff Bartos at six percent.

The poll was conducted on April 7 and 9 among 502 likely Republican primary voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.38 percent.

Eagle Consulting noted it concluded its April 9 surveying hours before Trump announced his endorsement of Oz, which occurred the evening of April 9.

The endorsement had come as a disappointment to some prominent supporters of the former president, such as former Senate candidate Sean Parnell, whom Trump had initially endorsed in the race until Parnell dropped out, and former Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, as well as several others. The reactions came in part because many had observed McCormick, a former CEO of one of the largest hedge funds in the world, surrounding himself with former Trump staffers and leaning into issues that defined Trump’s presidency and prioritized the American working class.

The second poll, taken by Emerson College Polling and the Hill from April 3 to 4, found McCormick one point ahead of Oz, 18 percent to 17 percent, followed by Barnette, Bartos, and Sands. Thirty-three percent of respondents said they were undecided in that poll.

The race, which takes place in just over a month, on May 17, will hinge largely on the sizable swath of undecideds seen in both polls, a fact that may give McCormick an advantage. When undecided respondents in the Emerson poll were asked which candidate they were leaning towards, McCormick’s lead widened to about seven percent.

With undecideds’ leanings factored into the results, McCormick received 27.2 percent support, Oz 20.6 percent, Bartos 17.1 percent, Barnette 14.8 percent, and Sands 11.4 percent.

The Emerson poll was conducted among 1,000 very likely voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.