KS-Sen: Sebelius Could Win (If She Ran)

by: Crisitunity

Fri Feb 06, 2009 at 2:55 PM EST

Kathleen Sebelius (D): 47
Todd Tiahrt (R): 37

Kathleen Sebelius (D): 48
Jerry Moran (R): 36
(MoE: ±4%)

Todd Tiahrt (R): 24
Jerry Moran (R): 19
Undecided: 57
(MoE: ±5%)

The race for the open Senate seat in Kansas looks to be Kathleen Sebelius's for the taking, if she would just show up (and hopefully these numbers will pique her interest). Research 2000 finds that the Kansas governor leads both of her potential candidates by a double-digit margin. If anyone can break the sixty-plus years of Republicans having a lock on the Kansas senate seats, it's her.

There's one sort of generalized caveat here, though: Sebelius isn't over the 50% mark here, and yet she's extremely well-known (with a 56% favorable/37% unfavorable, almost everyone has an opinion of her), leaving me to wonder where that last few percent to put her over the top in this dark-red state are going to come from. With both Reps. Tiahrt and Moran much less-known (check out the undecided numbers on their primary), they seem to have the room to expand. While you can't deny that Sebelius is in the driver's seat here, this looks to be a much closer race in Nov. 2010 than the current gaudy numbers indicate. (Discussion is already well underway in conspiracy's diary.)