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| Roll Call photo |
Republican Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra, now trailing Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow by 14 points, appears to have been damaged by his controversial Super Bowl Sunday ad, according to a new poll.
The survey by Public Policy Polling found that 54 percent of voters in the state were familiar with the 30-second sport featuring an Asian woman, and within that group 45 percent said it made them less likely to vote for him. That compared to only 16 percent who considered it a positive spot and 37 percent who said it didn’t make a difference to them either way.
Independents said they were turned off by the ad, which critics said presented a Chinese stereotype, it and the Republican frontrunner has gone from leading with them by six points in July to now trailing by four points. Stabenow’s taken her biggest lead yet in the four polls of the Michigan Senate race PPP has conducted, dating back to December of 2010.
She now leads Hoekstra by a 51-37 margin. Her gap over Republican Clark Durant is even wider, at 17 points, 50-33. In three previous polls, Stabenow led Hoekstra by an average of just seven points and on the most recent one, in July, her lead was nine.
According to PPP, what’s interesting is that Stabenow’s approval numbers have barely budged at all over the last six months. Over the summer PPP found her at 46/40, and now she’s at 47/41. But Hoekstra’s numbers have taken a turn for the worse.
In July his favorability rating was narrowly positive at 31/30. Now he’s dropped a net 11 points to a minus-10 spread at 28/38. There hasn’t been a big shift in his numbers with Democrats or Republicans but with independents his numbers have flipped disastrously, from plus-10 (33/23) to minus-10 (29/39).
