Incumbent Liberal Senator Sinema Currently in Third Place in General Election Poll
If you are one of the last holdouts in America thinking that moderates of any stripe control the Democratic Party, it’s time to think again.
Public Policy Polling published the results of a new survey conducted in Arizona on Jan. 5 and 6, and it’s clearly aimed at pushing out a relatively moderate incumbent in favor of a card-carrying leftist.
PPP is, as regular readers of The Western Journal certainly know, closely aligned with the Democratic Party and, in fact, was started to counterbalance what founder Dean Debnam considered a right-leaning slant to public polling in the 1990s.
So when it claims after surveying just 590 Arizonan voters — not likely voters, mind you, just voters — that current Arizona incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has only half the voter support of Democratic challenger Ruben Gallego, you have to remember that there’s some agenda behind those numbers.
PPP did not publish its methodology or the margin of error for the poll, making the results even less reliable. It did note, however, that 80 percent of its respondents were from the Phoenix area — whereas only about 62 percent of Arizona’s population lives in Maricopa County, meaning that these results were further complicated by a strong over-representation of one area of the state.
But don’t let little things like facts dissuade you from taking these numbers to heart. Or at least, that’s what PPP is hoping for.
Here’s what the group wants you to believe: Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has 36 percent of the vote; former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, the Republican candidate, has 35 percent of the vote; and independent Sen. Sinema is sitting at a lowly 17 percent, with virtually no chance.
Of course, we have the better part of a year before anyone has to cast a vote, but, again, PPP isn’t trying to familiarize you with facts so much as baffle you with … uh, manure. (Come on, this is a family-friendly publication.)
But PPP doesn’t want you merely to believe these numbers; it wants you to act on them. Specifically, it wants Sinema to act on them. By dropping out of the race.
Or, failing that, it wants you to conclude that she’s too far behind to have any chance of victory and withdraw your support from her. And then, if enough people do that, she’ll drop out of the race — or so PPP hopes.
Why do they hope that? Because they assume that more Sinema supporters in the state will break for Gallego — since Sinema was a fellow Democrat until recently and is certainly well to the left of your average Republican — than will go to Lake.
And if Gallego really is sitting at 36 percent or so and Lake at 35, PPP really wants Sinema out of the race. Gallego needs all the help he can get.
You’ll remember that Sinema, while no raging conservative, has been a thorn in the side of the Democrats on closely fought bills and issues like doing away with the filibuster in the Senate.
Through 2022 (the most recent data available), Sinema had voted in accordance with President Joe Biden’s stated position 93.9 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.
That seems high — until you look at the same source for Gallego’s voting record and see that he voted with Biden in lockstep, 100 percent of the time.
If you were Biden, who would you want in the Senate? Gallego, obviously. Which is why Democratic pollsters like PPP want him there, too.
Gallego has a shot to win in November outright, of course. But Lake is a strong candidate, and Gallego will need every vote to come out on top.
If PPP can get even a few more votes away from Sinema in Gallego’s favor, that will help. And don’t believe for a second that they’re above it.
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