Well, at least one scary dude is..
going down.
Poll: Casey's lead over Santorum stretches to 14 pointsKIMBERLY HEFLING
Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Democrat Bob Casey appears to have opened a double digit lead over Sen. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania's Senate race, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Casey had a 14-point lead in the Quinnipiac University Poll, with 54 percent of likely voters saying they planned to vote for him compared with 40 percent for Santorum. One percent said they wouldn't vote and 6 percent said they didn't know.
Casey had a seven-point lead among likely voters in a match up between the two in the same poll on Aug. 15.
Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Connecticut-based university's polling institute, said the results show that Santorum's ads "are certainly not doing him any good."
Virginia Davis, a Santorum campaign spokeswoman, said polls are unreliable and the campaign has no plans to alter its advertising campaign.
Polls "don't impact how we communicate the senator's record," Davis said.
Larry Smar, a Casey campaign spokesman, said the polling indicates that voters are responding to the message in Casey's TV ads.
On Monday, a state judge said Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli would be removed from the ballot because the party did not have enough valid signatures in its nominating petitions - a move expected to help Casey. Republicans had helped Romanelli in his petition drive.
In a three-way matchup, Casey led Santorum 51 percent to 39 percent among likely voters with 4 percent saying they would vote for Romanelli, the latest poll found. Five percent were undecided.
Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican, has raised significantly more money than Casey and has been running ads statewide since late June - a two-month head start on his Democratic challenger.
With his ads, Casey seems to have made progress defining himself favorably, Richards said.
Both campaigns have run positive and negative ads, but one of Santorum's ads garnered attention because it implies that Casey's campaign team includes men who are under investigation. It features actors portraying donors to Casey's campaign meeting inside a smoke-filled jail cell.
The senator's campaign has conceded that none of the men gave money to Casey's Senate campaign and that two contributed to Santorum's campaign, which donated the money to nonprofit groups.
Casey had a 39 percent favorability rating among voters, with 18 percent viewing him unfavorably, the poll found. Thirty-five percent said they had a favorable view of Santorum, while 40 percent said they had an unfavorable view.
With six weeks to go before the Nov. 7 general election, 17 percent of those polled who named a candidate said they still might change their mind.
The results of the poll were based on telephone interviews with 933 likely Pennsylvania voters from Sept. 19 through Sunday. The poll carried a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
