#NCSEN PPP March poll shows serious Tillis drop, slight Brannon climb
I am sure the latest polling from PPP is causing a lot of establishment heads to get scratched in bewilderment. State House speaker Thom Tillis is getting all the buzz as the inevitable GOP nominee against incumbent US senator Kay Hagan. He’s racking up endorsements and financial contributions from elected Republicans in Raleigh and Washington. Karl Rove has helped Tillis rack up a huge campaign war chest. The Tillis campaign has spent nearly $400K in airing two TV ads. Yet, the speaker can’t seem to shake the pack of lesser-known, lower-budget candidates in North Carolina’s GOP primary for US Senate. 
Last month, Tillis led the field with 20 percent, with Tea Party favorite Greg Brannon and Heather Grant tied for second with 13 percent.
This month, PPP shows Tillis and Brannon deadlocked in the lead with 14 percent apiece. Heather Grant follows with 11 percent.
Since that February poll, Brannon has gone through a PR nightmare — with his campaign taking a hammering from supporters of opposing campaigns and the mainstream media. An endorsement from FreedomWorks, a good interview with and kind words from Glenn Beck, and endorsements from Tea Party favorites Rand Paul and Mike Lee have apparently helped mitigate that bad publicity. Brannon just returned from a visit to the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC, where FreedomWorks and other Tea Party activists hosted a fundraiser for him.
Here are the full results of the March poll: Brannon 14%, Tillis 14%, Grant 11%, Ted Alexander 7%, Mark Harris 7% and Alex Bradshaw at 6 percent.
A full 36 percent of poll respondents were undecided. As far as name ID goes, the poll found most of the field hovering around the 25 to 30 percent range in terms of name ID. Tillis was the only candidate recognized by half of respondents. His favorable-unfavorable rating stands at 24%-28%.
Tilli$’$ advertisment money bomb flopped in what is called a Dead Cat Bounce. You can drop a dead cat from as high as you want, it’ll bounce a little but in the end it’s still a dead cat. Not gonna run. Drop another million, give it two mil their small.
I hear Dr. Greg Brannon’s cat got up and is running though. Of course his cat is a Bengali Tiger!!
I take this as good news. But, PPP polling is often whack, so I wouldn’t read too much into it.
I agree 100%, jweaks. But let’s assume for a second that they actually got this poll right for a change. Here’s my prediction…..come Primary Day, a bunch of these Undecideds walk in to vote, get past the poll stander mob still undecided, look at the ballot and see one woman’s name and think “why not?” and go for her significantly more than the 11% she’s getting here, throwing the race into a July runoff either between Brannon and Tillis or Grant and Tillis. This scenario assumes, of course, that the other candidates not named Brannon or Tillis at least get roughly as much of the vote as this poll would indicate.
I also wonder where the Alexander vote is coming from, other than his home turf around Shelby. Alexander is a very old blue blood name in Mecklenburg County, so I wonder if that cuts against Tilli$ there.
Looks like that civil suit on Brannon is just not getting any traction at all as a negative.
I agree, seems that way. My “guess” is that it’s because the lawsuit issue seems so paper thin. Yes… there’s a “headline”, but beyond that there isnt really much substance to stick on him…. looking at even just a teeny bit under the surface there’s nothing really solid that people can point to and go “there, that right there was the act of a dishonorable, bad guy”.
That “may” be the case or it may not be….but no one else really seem to have a handle on it either. And of the details I “have” heard about…. nothing bad seems to be there and it really seems like just a bunch of smoke so far.
Oh my goodness the man must have delivered over 20,000 babies in his career and cared for more women’s health. If that many women trust him with their lives and their baby’s life and health then he’s got to be trustworthy and awesome. I’ve never met him but all that I am hearing good about him he’s awesome!
Why so many people not like Thom Tillis? Hoping they saved the receipt for the
$1 MILLION Man’s ad buy. Somebody needs to ask for a refund, it didn’t work.
46% Not Sure just how much they don’t like him. 46% Not sure if: Do we not really like him a lot or do we not really like him a little or do we not really like him at all. Unsure how much we really don’t like him but we know we don’t like him.
Poor Thom, he dropped all that money only to confirm people really don’t like him. That’s like buying a brand new car and the hotel ballroom where the prom will be held, only to find out that your date’s really not into you and stands you up for the big daynce. This must be just devastating to Tholl Road Thom. Just devastating. The humanity of it all.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2014/PPP_Release_NC_311.pdf
Q10 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of Thom Tillis?
Favorable……………………………………………………………. 18%
Unfavorable ………………………………………………………….37%
Not sure (of the level of dislike we have for him)…………46%
That favorable / unfavorable ratio on Tilli$ being so far upside down shows that he is not electable. He is just another Rover – a Karl Rove dud like the other 10 Senate candidates he backed, out of a total of 12, who lost.
If Republicans really want to win, the battle cry in the primary needs to be ”NOT Tilli$”.
According to the Fall matchups in the poll, the two primary candidates who run best against Hagan are Alexander and Brannon, and the one who runs worst is Tilli$.
The lawsuit against Brannon was a complete joke and I still wonder who was behind it all. I am still supporting Greg, but will get behind the winner in Nov. to defeat Obama’s puppet.
If the lawsuit against Brannon was a complete joke then why did he not tell the judge and the jury that?
That is what is most surprising about this. How can a candidate for the United States Senate allow himself to be found liable if he was indeed innocent? Certainly a candidate for the United States Senate would realize a jury decision is a serious matter.
How could he allow himself to be put in this position if he is innocent? You would expect a candidate for the United States Senate to understand the laws of the land and the rights of the accused under the Constitution.
Surely he knew of his right to stand before the jury and explain the truth to them in order to avoid them making a wrong decision.
I just cannot understand how this could happen.
Thom Tillis is Wrong for the US Senate – Columnist Brian Lasorsa
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-lasorsa/thom-tillis-is-wrong-for-_b_4930726.html
Columnist Brian LaSorsa: I can’t be any franker about this: if Tillis wants to stop government waste, he should drop out of the race immediately. Otherwise the Republican Party will end up burning a hole in its pocket for a candidate who may very well be unelectable or who, in an even worse scenario, will win the election and make not a single change to the deficit-friendly legislative chamber we call the United States Senate.