While everyone gears up for 2024, there are important statewide elections coming up, especially in Virginia and Kentucky. While Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) is looking to keep the Republican majority in the House of Delegates and have the party retake control of the state Senate, all eyes are on whether Kentucky will replace its incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear with Republican nominee Daniel Cameron, currently the commonwealth's attorney general. As bright red a place as Kentucky may seem – and its legislature is under Republican control – electing a Republican governor in November may be an uphill battle, at least this many weeks out.
Back in May, Cameron handily won the Republican nomination in a five-person race with 47.72 percent of the vote. The second-place finisher, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, had 21.69 percent of the vote. It's not looking so easy for Cameron in the general election against Beshear, though.
Polls on the race are few and far between. The latest, from last Friday, released by Emmerson College Polling, shows Beshear up with 49 percent of the vote, compared to Cameron's 33 percent. Thirteen percent are undecided.
As it turns out, Beshear's support is good not only with his base but with independents and Republicans. "Governor Beshear not only holds the majority of Democratic voters' support at 85%, but also 44% of independent voters' support and 28% of Republican voters' support," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, stated. "Cameron has a weaker base of support within his own party with 53%, and trails Beshear among independent voters with 25%."
The poll also points to Beshear's 44 percent approval rating, while 28 percent disapprove and 28 percent are neutral.
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"While Biden is an unpopular figure among Kentucky voters, Beshear has been able to separate himself from the president: he holds a 66% approval rating within his own party, and a 34% approval among both independent and Republican voters," Kimball added. President Joe Biden has just a 22 percent approval rating when it comes to the job he is doing, while 62 percent disapprove, and 16 percent are neutral.
The poll was conducted October 1-3 with 450 registered voters and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percentage points.
Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator for CNN who is from Kentucky, had strong words about that poll, dubbing anyone who would believe that Cameron only has 33 percent support to be "a complete moron."
If you believe that any Republican nominee for any KY office is at 33 in October, you are a complete moron. https://t.co/WhimwcVKRI
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) October 6, 2023
Sean Southard, the Director of Communications for the Republican Party of Kentucky also took to X, pointing out how the poll undermined Cameron's success for the primary as well, in that it only had him with 33 percent support. "Daniel Cameron will win on Nov. 7," his post hopefully declared.
Emerson was off by 15 points right before the primary.
— Sean Southard (@SeanSouthardKY) October 6, 2023
Cameron-33
Craft-18
Quarles-13
The results?
Cameron-48
Quarles-22
Craft-17
Daniel Cameron will win on Nov. 7. https://t.co/hTSZv2aN2Q
While other recent polls have shown Beshear up as well, it has not been by such high margins. A WPA Intelligence poll from late last month showed Beshear up 6 points, while one from earlier last month showed him up by 8 points. Both WPA Intelligence polls, sponsored by the Club for Growth PAC, had surveyed likely voters. A poll conducted August 30-September 1 conducted by Hart Research Associates showed Beshear up 9 points. A Public Opinion Strategies poll from July showed Behsear up by 4 points, while one from June showed him up by 10 points, both among registered voters.
The best polls for Cameron were conducted in late May, right after he won the nomination. A Cygnal poll showed Cameron and Beshear even at 47 percent each among likely voters. A co/efficient poll surveying likely voters showed Beshear only up by 2 points, within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.12 percent.
Jennings also shared on X how "horserace polling in Kentucky has been the stuff of nightmares," citing a Decision Desk HQ piece from earlier on Monday titled, "Why Are Kentucky Polls So Bad?"
.@DecisionDeskHQ on crap polling in KY https://t.co/hzXUZtTwKM pic.twitter.com/zrjFXvplcq
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) October 9, 2023
Beyond the excerpt that Jennings highlighted, there's plenty else mentioned as to why it's not necessarily a shoo-in for Beshear. "There is consensus building that the Kentucky race is leaning Democratic or, if you look around Election Twitter, that Governor Andy Beshear is practically a shoo-in for re-election. Opposing forces are at work inside the state that position it to be the closest gubernatorial race in November. Unfortunately, state polling hasn’t helped to clarify this and should be taken with a grain of salt so large you risk hypernatremia," the Decision Desk piece mentions.
As the piece mentions, with original emphasis:
I really can’t exaggerate how bad the horserace polling is in this state. Harry Enten addressed it back in 2015 for FiveThirtyEight, and the problem just won’t go away. I went through forty polls released in the final months of every major statewide campaign from 2014 through 2022 (the final release in the rare case where a pollster had more than one that cycle). Comparing the horserace poll to the actual result was depressing, so much so, I called up a good friend of the Desk, Miles Coleman (at UVA’s Center for Politics) to commiserate about it.
When I asked him to guess how many of those 40 polls underestimated the Republican’s final vote share, his response was a sober “nearly all of them”. He was right: 39 out of those 40 polls had underestimated the Republican. The sole exception was a Trafalgar poll that found Bevin ahead in 2019*.
Worse than the consistent undercount was the scale of it: enough were in the double digits to yield an average eight-point miss. The error was far smaller on the Democratic side, with 28 of those 40 over-estimating, the balance spot-on or slightly under, and averaging out to a one-point overshoot. For whatever reason, the polls can tell you what the Democrat is going to end up with, but in a two-way race, you’re still missing half of the story.
That being said, Beshear still likely has an edge. "Money and favorability is lifting Beshear up. The political gravity of the state gives Cameron a chance to defeat him, but we haven’t seen him really catch fire. With only a few weeks left in the campaign, Republicans still have a narrow window to catch up on advertising, but Beshear has been considerably dominant and likely won’t lose his edge there," the piece mentions toward the end.
Beshear not only has the incumbent advantage, he polls well, especially for a Democrat in a Republican state. It's not just with the Emmerson poll, either, where the limitations are acknowledged above. A Morning Consult poll released in July showed him tied to be the third most popular governor in the country, behind Vermont's Phil Scott (R), Wyoming's Mark Gordon (R), and tied with Hawaii's Josh Green (D) and New Hampshire's Chris Sununu (R). Green, Sununu, and Beshear each have 64 percent support according to the poll.
Morning Consult even made Beshear the subject as their headline, "U.S. Governor Rankings: Beshear Gets a Boost, Desantis' Approval Dips." With Republicans pretty much evenly split on whether they approve of Beshear or not, the poll's write-up noted that Beshear is "the country’s most popular Democratic governor with the other party’s voters."
Behesear's family also has something of a legacy in Kentucky politics. He and his father unseated Republican governors to get elected, with the current governor having unseated Matt Bevin in 2019.
As Decision Desk post also noted, Beshear is using the abortion issue to hurt Cameron, who has been a pro-life stalwart.
As popular as he may be with the other party, Beshear is still a pro-abortion Democrat, and like the rest in his party, has engaged in fearmongering on the issue, particularly on rape exceptions, while not acknowledging how his own party supports abortion up until birth for any reason without legal limit.
Cameron responded to a campaign ad discussing abortion exceptions for rape and incest over a video message posted to X in which he called Beshear's tactic "the most despicable campaign in Kentucky history" and said Behesear "lectures us on partisanship and unity, then runs disgusting, false attacks."
In the video, Cameron made clear that "if the legislature were to bring me a bill with exceptions, I would sign it," and then sought to contrast his views to Beshear on abortion, calling the governor "an extremist whose record in public office is clear."
Andy Beshear is running the most despicable campaign in Kentucky history. Watch my statement below. pic.twitter.com/zoAg6QC6gq
— Daniel Cameron (@DanielCameronAG) September 20, 2023
