AL-Gov: Davis Leads in Primary, But Dems Trail in General

by: DavidNYC

Mon May 24, 2010 at 12:53 PM EDT

Democratic Primary:

Artur Davis (D): 41
Ron Sparks (D): 33
Other: 8
Undecided: 11
^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Republican Primary:

Bradley Byrne (R): 29
Roy Moore (R): 23
Tim James (R): 17
Robert Bentley (R): 9
Bill Johnson (R): 3
Other: 2
Undecided: 17
^{(MoE: ±5%)}

In my role as Daily Kos contributing editor, I asked Markos to poll this race because of a string of stories (as well as rumors of polls) claiming that Rep. Artur Davis was suffering in his primary against Ag. Comm'r Ron Sparks due to his vote against healthcare reform. Of course, since this is our first poll here, it's hard to tell if there's any truth to this narrative without trendlines. On the one hand, perhaps not - Davis does, after all, have an eight-point lead. On the other hand, that doesn't seem so imposing, given that Davis has outspent Sparks by a large margin. In any event, the numbers are not too far off from a recent Davis internal, which had him up 46-33. Sparks hasn't released any of his own polls.

As for the GOP race, crazy Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore could make this interesting. If no candidate gets 50% on June 1st, there will be a run-off on July 13th. As you'll see below, Dems perform best against Moore, who is currently vying for the top spot with ex-state Sen. Bradley Byrne. Tim James, son of former governor Fob and notorious for his recent "This is Alabama - we speak English" is also in contention. The internal polling has been all over the map here, with James claiming the lead in one of his own surveys.

General Election:

Artur Davis (D): 31
Bradley Byrne (R): 48
Other: 7
Undecided: 14

Artur Davis (D): 38
Roy Moore (R): 43
Other: 9
Undecided: 10

Artur Davis (D): 37
Tim James (R): 45
Other: 8
Undecided: 10

Ron Sparks (D): 34
Bradley Byrne (R): 45
Other: 9
Undecided: 12

Ron Sparks (D): 40
Roy Moore (R): 41
Other: 12
Undecided: 7

Ron Sparks (D): 38
Tim James (R): 44
Other: 19
Undecided: 8
^{(MoE: ±4%)}

The numbers look pretty bad for Dems - but it's Alabama in a very difficult year, so you can't say any of this is unexpected. I do think there is something disturbing about these results, though. Sparks and Davis have almost identical statewide favorables - 42-38 and 44-40 respectively. Why, then, does Davis perform consistently worse across the board against all Republicans? Though Davis is African American, he and Sparks do equally well among blacks in head-to-heads with Republicans. But Sparks does consistently better among whites. In any event, Dems should still be rooting for a Roy Moore primary win.

R2K also looked at the sleepy Senate race:

Democratic Primary:

William Barnes (D): 39
Simone De Moore(D): 11
Other: 3
Undecided: 47
^{(MoE: ±5%)}

Republican Primary:

Richard Shelby (R-inc): 64
Clint Moser (R): 14
Undecided: 23
^{(MoE: ±5%)}

General Election:

William Barnes (D): 33
Richard Shelby (R-inc): 57
Other: 3
Undecided: 7

Simone De Moore(D): 27
Richard Shelby (R-inc): 62
Other: 3
Undecided: 8
^{(MoE: ±4%)}

Since we were already in the field, we were curious to know if Sen. Richard Shelby's teabagging opponent was getting any traction. Answer: no. In fact, Shelby's the only candidate among these four to have even filed an FEC report - and the 76-year-old Shelby has an amazing $17 million on hand.