This is hot off the press.
In polling that was performed from July 6-9 among 500 likely voters with a margin of error of 4.38% for the Rounds Campaign, Rounds is predictably way ahead of the office-seekers.
(It’s all personal interview polling, not electronic, so I give it a bit more pause than some of the others.)
Why should this get our attention? About a month ago, nine-year South Dakota resident and six-year U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs released a push poll paid for by his out of state donors that the Independent Bengs used to beg the actual Democrat candidate Julian Beaudion to exit the race.
In a nutshell, Bengs complained that If everyone will just quit, I can win! Well, no.
If you look at the poll where they spoke with actual people, it appears that Julian Beaudoin has a stronger argument than “Third Place” Bengs, because Bengs is the one who is trailing the field. By 3 points in an internal poll conducted by the Rounds campaign. While I didn’t have the cross-tabs shared with me, I’m told this was a straight up questionnaire, with no push questions on the initial ballot test.
What was shared, is that in a straight up head to head contest – supposedly what Bengs wants – Rounds crushes him 56-33. When they start pushing test messages where voters learned of Bengs’ liberal, socialist views on abortion, taxes, guns and Obamacare expansion – Bengs gets crushed by even more with Rounds coming out 63-31.
I did reach out to the campaign about the poll, and was told that “Julian has better than 3:1 support from base democrats over Bengs. Democrats and Independents aren’t buying what Bengs is peddling. Mike actually wins with independents too, because Bengs is such a radical. They’ve already decided that he’s a phony. Julian on the other hand, is very popular with his base and very likable – unlike Bengs. If Bengs wasn’t such an anti-competition whiner, I’d never suggest the democrat candidate has more appeal,” said Rob Skjonsberg, a long time Rounds advisor.
Bengs might think he has a winning message trying to push the guy ahead of him out of the contest. But that’s not the case.
So far to date, despite using Democrat party tools to try to siphon cash from the Democrat base in support of his non-party campaign, Bengs has so far bungled the race.