20th Congressional Special Election

Because elections are so great, we’ve decided to extend the season by having a special election end of the month, filling Gillibrand’s seat in the House. GOP nominee Jim Tedisco, state Assembly minority leader, did have the name recognition and an early double digit lead over Dem rival Scott Murphy. But the most recent Siena poll released March 12th shows Murphy cutting Tedisco’s lead down to four percent.

“While Murphy continues to enjoy stronger support among Democratic voters than Tedisco has among enrolled Republicans, the biggest shift is among independent voters, who previously gave Tedisco a significant 45-31 percent lead but now favor Murphy by a 43-37 percent margin.
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In a Siena poll released Feb. 26, voters said Tedisco would do a better job than Murphy would representing them on six issues. Murphy now leads on two of the issues, including the most important issue for voters in the 20th district: the economy.

Murphy now leads Tedisco on the economy 42 percent to 38 percent — two weeks ago, Tedisco led 34 percent to 30 percent.”

Murphy is a venture capitalist and lives within the district. Media saturation has been about equal, but it definitely seems Murphy’s ads have been more successful. After some fairly soft punches between the two, Tedisco has promised to run positive from here on. Whoopey. Obviously the economy is the big issue and it’s promising that Murphy is viewed so favorably here. I wasn’t impressed with Scott Murphy at first sight and still have trouble remembering the guy’s name at times, but he’s making a run for it and I’d love to see our seat stay blue.

Worth watching will be a televised debate March 24th at 7PM on WNYT; one week before the election on the 31st. Happy poll-going.