Tedisco Has Lead Against Murphy, Poll
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- February
- 26
Republican congressional candidate James Tedisco holds a 12 percentage point lead against Democratic candidate Scott Murphy in the 20th District race to succeed Kirsten Gillibrand, a Siena College poll today found.
The poll gives Tedisco, Assembly minority leader, a 46 percent to 34 percent lead over Murphy in a district that stretches from the Hudson Valley to the North Country. A special election is set for March 31 to succeed Gillibrand, who was appointed last month as U.S. senator replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton.
While 20 percent of voters in the heavily Republican district are still undecided, the poll found Tedisco was stronger on six specific issues, although his lead over Murphy on five issues – including the economy, the most important issue for voters in the poll – is in single digits.
Tedisco was viewed favorably by 47 percent of voters and unfavorably by 20 percent, with 34 percent not having an opinion. Murphy had a 29 percent to 10 percent favorable rating, with 60 percent of voters undecided.
“Jim Tedisco currently has a 12-point lead over Scott Murphy in a district that has a 15-point Republican enrollment edge,” said Steven Greenberg, spokesman for the Siena New York Poll. “And one of every five likely voters says that they have not yet made a choice in this special election.”
Murphy has gained 70 percent of support among Democrats, while Tedisco has garnered 63 percent of the support among Republicans, the poll found.
Murphy has a two-percentage-point lead in the northern part of the district, while Tedisco has an 11-point lead in the southern part of the district and is 20 points ahead in the Albany area, which is the largest part of the district.
The poll was conducted February 18-19 to 710 likely voters and had margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 9:38 am by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
