Democrat blog laughably claims Brian Bengs has path to victory. Despite 81% of people not having a clue who he is.

This one made made laugh out loud this AM. The Democrat Blog SD Standard makes a wacky claim this morning that a path to victory exists for Democrat US Senate candidate Brian Bengs on the basis of a push poll from a Democrat Polling firm.  (No, really).

“After testing four frames giving the respondents additional information — one positive Bengs frame, one negative, one positive Thune frame and one negative — Bengs ultimately led Thune 45% to 38%,” according to the release.

Read that here.

So after trashing Senator John Thune on the phone, they managed to get some people to move their opinion? Well, they buried the lede about the problem that the Bengs has.

Name identification is a major hurdle for Bengs even as the campaign approaches the final month. The poll indicates he is largely unknown to voters, with 81% having no opinion or never having heard of him. That includes 75% of registered Democrats who were polled, who either did not know who he was or had no opinion of him.

and..

The release said the poll indicates the pathway to victory for Bengs is introducing him to voters by “using the recommended message simulating equal spending” in the race.

That is far from the case, with Thune having raised more than $11 million this cycle and having more than $16.9 million in cash on hand as of June 30. Bengs had raised almost $151,000 and had $31,307 on hand on the same date.

Read that here.

So, Brian Bengs has a name ID among South Dakotans hovering around 19% going into absentee voting and the last 45 days of the election…  but ridiculously claims that he has a path to victory?  Ha ha ha. That’s pretty darned funny.

Good gosh. I don’t know of any candidate in South Dakota with name I.D. less than 20%, who could seriously think they have a way to win.

I mean, how do I frame how bad that is?  Let’s look back to an earlier time and an earlier poll…

According to our KELO TV scientific poll, if the election were held today, Thune would defeat Democrat Jay Williams by a wide margin, 65% to 27%, 8% are still undecided.

Only Williams doesn’t see it that way.

“Maybe the polls are trending, because I just saw a poll yesterday where it had 58% to 38%, I had virtually the same numbers as Secretary Clinton had, which I hope is the case,” Williams said.

and..

If you recall, when it comes to name recognition only 2% of the voters didn’t recognize Thune, but 52% don’t recognize Williams’ name at all.

Read that here.

In the recent past, when Democrats could find a candidate, one of the mediocre offerings was Jay Williams. Even he managed to achieve name id of 48%.  Yet Bengs isn’t even half of a Jay Williams yet as he struggles to get past 19%.

In that 2016 race, Senator Thune beat Jay 72-28%.

I don’t anticipate it’s going to be much different 6 years later.