Two polls have bad news for Gov. Doug Ducey's re-election campaign

Richard Ruelas | The Republic | azcentral.com

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Gov. Doug Ducey received two bits of bad news in polls released this week: One poll showed only about a quarter of voters think Ducey deserves re-election. The other showed he is less popular in Arizona than President Donald Trump.

A poll released Tuesday by NBC News/Marist showed that 59 percent of registered voters surveyed in Arizona thought a person other than Ducey should be governor.

It found just 26 percent thought he deserved re-election.

Another poll released Monday from Emerson College, taken half by automated phone calls and half by an online survey, showed Ducey's approval ratings relative to Trump:

Ducey approval rating: 31 percent

Trump approval rating: 43 percent

Trump, however, had more voters disapprove of him than Ducey.

Ducey disapproval rating: 39 percent

Trump disapproval rating: 49 percent

Ducey campaign disputes polls' results

Patrick Ptak, a Ducey re-election campaign spokesman, disputed the results of both polls.

The NBC News/Marist poll, Ptak said, had numbers different than what the Ducey campaign has seen in other surveys.

The Emerson College poll, he said, had flawed methodology, relying on automated voice responses rather than answers taken by a live operator. It also, he said, surveyed registered voters, rather than likely voters.

Ptak said he would not comment on results of the Emerson poll.

“I think the methodology had a lot of issues with it that would call any results that they found into question,” he said.

Nearly two-thirds of those polled by Emerson said that Arizona was not adequately funding education. The poll showed 64 percent said there was insufficient funding for education.

Ducey has made education funding a key piece of his campaign commercials, television interviews and speeches as he has kicked off his re-election campaign. The Arizona Education Project, an independent group, also has run commercials touting the teacher pay raise plan Ducey proposed, and the legislature passed.

The Emerson poll also showed David Garcia leading his two challengers in the Democratic primary. Though nearly half of respondents were still undecided in the race.

Democrats have different takeaways from results

Garcia said the Emerson poll, which had methods he also questioned, nevertheless fell in line with a poll his campaign conducted, showing him well ahead of his Democratic challengers.

“If this was the only poll and it was not consistent with what we had seen in other polls using other methodology, I would discount it,” he said.

Garcia said he was surprised at the result showing Ducey being less popular than Trump and said he believed it stemmed from the public's thoughts on education funding.

"The reality of what people are seeing every single day in their public schools, what they're seeing in their neighborhoods," he said, "is going to belie any ad that Ducey puts out."

The Emerson poll showed 30 percent of respondents chose Garcia, compared with 13 percent for state Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, and 9 percent for Kelly Fryer. But the largest number of voters, 48 percent, remained undecided.

A spokeswoman for Farley’s campaign, Kelsi Browning, said in an e-mail that the results showed the race “is still anyone’s game.” Browning said Farley has outraised Garcia and is prepared to outspend him and win the August primary.

Fryer, in a statement released by her campaign, said that voters have soured on Ducey and not energized by either Farley or Garcia.

“That’s why I’m on the scoreboard even though I only jumped into this race a few months ago,” Fryer’s statement read.

Poll director defends methodology

Kimball, the director of the Emerson poll, said the online survey is a new method of conducting polls. It was added to survey the increasing number of younger voters who lack landline phones, he said.

Federal law prohibits using a computer program to dial to cellphone, Kimball said.

The Emerson poll is rated "B-plus" by the statistics-heavy website, FiveThirtyEight. It found Emerson predicted the winner in 75 percent of the races it analyzed.

The Marist poll is rated an "A" by FiveThirtyEight, saying it had predicted the winner in 85 percent of races analyzed.

The NBC News/Marist poll was conducted last week, from Father’s Day through Thursday, by live operators calling both landline and mobile phones and reaching 982 adults, according to results posted on the Marist College website.

The Emerson poll of 650 Arizona voters was conducted Thursday and Friday by the Boston-based college.

Half of the results were taken by telephone, using a computerized automated-response program, Kimball said. The other half were taken using an online panel, culled from voters who agreed to participate in occasional surveys and are compensated in some fashion, Kimball said.

The NBC News/Marist poll's margin of error was 4.1 percentage points. The Emerson College poll's margin of error was 4 percentage points, with the margin of error specifically for the Democratic primary voters was 6.2 percentage points.

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