Lugar’s Longshot?
Friday was not a very good day for Indiana’s senior United States Senator. And while many are drafting Richard Lugar’s political obituary, rumors of his imminent demise may be slightly exaggerated.
A poll by Howey Politics Indiana and DePauw University had the incumbent trailing his opponent, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock by 10-points, 48-38; definitely not the place you want to be a few days before an election. The anti-Lugar folks smell blood in the water and rallied on Saturday in Indianapolis in preparing for their march to victory.
Luckily for the incumbent, there are still a few items out there that can allow him to squeak out a victory, there isn’t a whole lot of room for error though. In fact, the best analogy I can use is the closing scene in Star Wars, where Luke Skywalker is flying down the Death Star canyon and Darth Vader and two Imperial Tie Fighters are in hot pursuit.
Although Lugar trails by 10-points, Moudock leads 37-30 amongst those who say they will definitely vote for either candidate. That means nearly 23% can change their mind between now and primary day. What’s also worth noting is that 97% of those surveyed had not voted yet. This is crucial because in order for Lugar to be successful, he has to build that firewall of early voters. When I did my last analysis of early voters (remember this is part art/part science) there were about 22,000 early vote ballots turned in. About 33% were identified as Lugar supporters and 18% Mourdock. The rest couldn’t be identified. However, I have been able to gather that about 20% of the early absentee voters have never voted in a GOP primary.
In addition, the Lugar camp is making about 70,000 phone calls this weekend, not only making sure they reach their audience, but also non-traditional Republican primary voters. This is important because the Howey poll shows Mourdock runs not only strong among ideological conservatives, which are typical primary voters, but more than 80% of the people supporting Mourdock are doing it because they have an issue with the incumbent, i.e. been in office too long, dislike him, don’t think he’s conservative enough. If he can build that firewall, he will likely survive, not by much, but he can squeak out a win.
As I stated earlier, these last few hours will be political life or death for the Senator. And if I may amend my Star Wars analogy, not only is Lugar flying down the Death Star canyon being pursued by Vader and the Imperial Tie Fighters, but Han Solo and Chewbacca won’t be coming back to save the day. We’ll see Tuesday evening if the force was with him.
