What we know is that you don’t know. But we already knew that.
According to a poll released today by the Pan Atlantic SMS Group, about 62 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans are undecided about which gubernatorial candidate they will vote for during the June 8 primary.
The poll was taken between May 21 and May 29 with a sample of 300 Democrats and 300 Republicans who all said they would “likely” vote during the June 8 primary. It has a 5.7 percent margin of error.
The leading candidates for those voters that had made their choice were Libby Mitchell for the Democrats and Les Otten for the Republicans.
About 13 percent of Democratic respondents said they would vote for or were leaning toward voting for Mitchell. Steve Rowe came in second with about 12 percent support, Rosa Scarcelli placed third with support from about 7 percent and Pat McGowan came in fourth with support from about 6 percent.
Otten topped the Republican field of seven candidates with about 17 percent of likely voters claiming they would vote for or were leaning toward voting for him. Paul LePage garnered 10 percent of likely voter support, Steve Abbott and Peter Mills about 8 percent each, Bill Beardsley about 4 percent, Bruce Poliquin about 3 percent and Matt Jacobson about 2 percent.
What does this mean?
It’s easy to try and read too much into this poll because there hasn’t been a lot of polling data released in this gubernatorial race. The sample sizes are very small, which is part of why the margin of error is so high. Given how close most of the candidates are to each other, the nearly 6 percent margin of error renders the whole thing pretty meaningless.
The key to the race on both sides of the aisle appears to remain what it was from the beginning – find those who support you and make sure they get to the polls.
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