Poll: Brewer leads Goddard by 19 points

Posted Aug 30, 2010

Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com

Gov. Jan Brewer holds a sizeable lead over Attorney General Terry Goddard in the race for governor.

Brewer leads Goddard 57 - 38 percent in a new survey by Rasmussen Reports.

Five percent are undecided and three percent prefer another candidate, Rasmussen said:

Sixty-five percent approve of the way Brewer is handling her job as Governor. That’s a remarkable improvement from 41% in March, a turnaround that highlights the impact associated with signing the state’s much talked about immigration law.

SB 1070 is favored by 65 percent of Arizona voters, Rasmussen said.

The survey of 500 likely Arizona voters was conducted last Wednesday, the day after Arizona's primary election. There is a 4.5 percent margin of error, Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen has been criticized for being a conservative pollster and pushing Republican talking points with their surveys, most significantly by the data guru Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com (who now analyzes polls for the New York Times).

The Brewer/Goddard poll questioned voters about Brewer's job rating as governor, but not about Goddard's performance as attorney general.

Goddard has challenged Brewer to a series of six debates after a required Clean Elections-sponsored faceoff. Brewer has demurred, and said last week that voters know enough about the two to make a choice.