The final independent poll before 20th Congressional District voters go to the polls on Tuesday, March 31, indicates that Scott Murphy has surpassed James Tedisco.
The Siena Research Institute poll, released Friday, March 27, indicates Murphy has the support of 47 percent of voters, while Tedisco has 43. Just seven percent of voters remain undecided.
Two percent of voters said they would vote for Libertarian Eric Sundwall, but he was recently removed from the ballot when thousands of his petition signatures were invalidated.
This is the third Siena poll that has been conducted during the course of the race. Tedisco has lost three points since the initial poll, released on Feb. 26, while Murphy has picked up 13 percent.
This remains a very tight race, with intense campaign activity on both sides, said Steven Greenberg, spokesman for the Siena New York Poll. This race is likely to be decided by the campaigns’ get-out-the-vote operations. Whichever side does a better job of getting their voters to the polls on Tuesday is likely to have a happier Thursday night.`
Voters said the commercials from both campaigns made them less likely to vote for the candidates. Two weeks ago, Murphy’s commercials were viewed posititevly by most voters, but now voters say his ads make them less likely to vote for him by a margin of 30 to 23 percent. With Tedisco’s spots, however, the ratio is 37 to 14. Voters say Tedisco has run the more negative campaign, 44 to 25, while one-in-five say that both campaigns have been equally negative.
Both campaigns made statements following the poll’s release:
`While Scott continues to win over voters by focusing on jobs, and turning our economy around, Tedisco keeps driving them away with his desperate and false attacks and by saying ‘No’ to saving or creating 76,000 Upstate jobs, and ‘No’ to the largest middle class tax cut in history,` said Ryan Rudominer, spokesman for the Murphy campaign, in a statement.
`Today’s Siena poll is simply another in a line of polls that show this race within the margin of error. In the end this race is coming down to voter intensity and turnout, and our internal polls show us with strong leads in both areas,` said Tedisco in a statement.
The Siena poll was conducted through telephone calls to 917 likely voters. It has a 3.2 percent margin of error.
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