With about seven weeks to go until the May 15 gubernatorial primary, none of the three Republican candidates have yet to show they are making any significant inroads to pose a serious threat to Gov. Tom Wolf's bid for a second term of office.

The latest Franklin & Marshall College poll suggests that perhaps endorsed GOP candidate Scott Wagner may do a little better against Wolf than his Republican primary opponents Paul Mango and Laura Ellsworth but a lot of voters remain undecided.

Poll director G. Terry Madonna said one of the problems Wagner and Mango are having is they are "tearing the hide off of each other" in their ads. Others that all three Republicans must combat is an energized Democratic base of likely voters and the lack of any big negative against Wolf to make him appear as undeserving of another term.

Madonna said they may point to last year's late state budget completion as a negative but voters didn't feel the impact of that delay. Nor have voteres heard Wolf propose any unpopular tax increase in his last two budgets. The only one he put on the table last year and this year is a shale tax and past polls show that tax is popular with voters.

All of that combined is what Madonna believes contributes to this latest poll of 423 registered voters conducted between March 19 and Monday showing more than two in five, or 43 percent, of registered voters in Pennsylvania believe the governor is doing an "excellent" or "good" job. That is up from 38 percent in September.

Nearly half, or 46 percent, believe the state is "headed in the right direction," which Madonna noted is the first time since 2009 more voters chose that option than said the state was "on the wrong track."

Still, he admits it is early to read too much into his poll findings. He said the questions regarding the gubernatorial candidates are simply intended to offer a glimpse of where the race stands at his point.

The poll, with a plus or minus 6.8 percentage point margin of error, found in these hypothetical gubernatorial candidate matchups that:

38 percent of voters would vote for Wolf and 21 percent for Wagner if that were the matchup with 35 percent undecided and 6 percent voting for some other candidate.

49 percent would vote for Wolf and 22 percent for Mango if that were the matchup with 25 percent undecided and 4 percent voting for some other candidate.

51 percent of voters would vote for Wolf and 22 percent for Ellsworth if that were the matchup, with 25 percent undecided and 2 percent voting for some other candidate.

Two of the Republican candidates see potential in how they fared in this early poll.

"This poll shows that Scott, the true conservative outsider in this race, is far better positioned to defeat Tom Wolf than either of his moderate primary challengers," said Wagner spokesman Andrew Romeo. "Scott is trailing Governor Wolf by the thinnest margin of all the Republicans and holds the incumbent under 40 percent. We are confident that when more Pennsylvanians learn of Scott's vision to turn Harrisburg back over to the people and contrast it with Governor Wolf's special interest and status quo promoting agenda, Scott will be the commonwealth's next governor."

Ellsworth, meanwhile, sees opportunity to move those numbers in her favor as she becomes better known. She pointed out her opponents have spent millions of dollars on their campaigns already, have been on TV and out running for a year or two. To see polls showing they are as close as they are at this time and the large number of voters who remain open-minded "tells me something," she said. "It gives me the most upside."

Neither Mango or Wolf's spokespeople chose to directly respond to the poll findings.