Poll: Daniel Cameron surges to tie with Andy Beshear in final days of KY governor’s race
It’s a dead heat in Kentucky.
In virtually all other public surveys, GOP gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron had been trailing Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. But in the one taken closest to when Kentuckians vote, Cameron tied Beshear 47-47.
The poll was conducted by Emerson College Polling, which surveyed 1,000 likely voters between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. Early voting had just begun on the final day of the poll.
Of those 1,000 likely voters polled, both Beshear and Cameron, the state’s attorney general, received the support of exactly 469. About 4% were undecided and just over 2% said they’d vote for “someone else” despite there being nobody else on the ballot, the Emerson poll revealed.
With 1,000 likely voters surveyed, the margin of error is +/- 3%.
Even more good news for Cameron: When the undecided voters were pressed on who they’d support, he led Beshear by a slim 49-48 margin.
This poll contrasts sharply with previous polling done on the race. Beshear led by double digits in the past two independently commissioned polls: He led by 10 percentage points in late June and by 16 points in an early October poll conducted by Emerson College/FOX56.
However, those polls registered a much higher numbers of undecided voters than this recent one.
Undecideds shrank considerably in this recent Emerson poll.
Elections analysis website fivethirtyeight.com gives Emerson College an “A-” rating as a pollster.
Compared to the October Emerson poll, the one that had Beshear up by 16 points, supporters of former GOP president Donald Trump have swung hard in Cameron’s direction.
“Cameron appears to have gained ground by consolidating Republican voters who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a memo.
“In October, 54% of Trump supporters supported Cameron. Now, as election day approaches, that number has jumped to 79% – a 25-point increase.”
Kimball also pointed out that in early October, the firm polled only 450 registered voters while this survey reached voters deemed “likely” to head to the polls or even those who’d already voted.
Unlike in 2019 — when Beshear defeated controversial former GOP Gov. Matt Bevin by a razor-thin 5,000-vote margin — there is no third-party candidate on the ballot this year. In 2019, Libertarian candidate John Hicks received 2% of the vote.
Cameron spokesperson Sean Southard said the poll is a signal that Cameron has grabbed momentum in the final days. He also referenced Democratic President Joe Biden, a frequent target of conservative messaging in this year’s gubernatorial race.
“The race between Biden Cheerleader Andy Beshear and Trump-backed Attorney General Daniel Cameron continues to tighten,” Southard said in a Friday morning statement. “It’s clear momentum is building for AG Cameron as voters learn more about Andy’s continued support for Joe Biden and his agenda in Kentucky.”
In response to the poll, Beshear spokesperson Alex Floyd said in a statement that the campaign had been “gearing up” for a tight race all year.
“Andy Beshear has consistently led this race, and he leads now with four days to go because voters like him and he’s done a good job,” Floyd said. “We’ve been gearing up to win a close race all year, and we’re headed into the final stretch with the energy and enthusiasm we need to win while Daniel Cameron is still struggling to defend an unpopular and extreme agenda.”
Political experts on both sides of the aisle have warned of putting too much stock in polls of the state, as the track record has been iffy in the past decade.
The most common issue, however, has been an underestimation of Republican support.
By the numbers
While Beshear and Cameron were tied among the poll respondents, a clear majority of those surveyed said they thought Beshear would win. Just under 57% told the pollster they expected Beshear to win compared to 41% who said the same of Cameron.
When asked who they voted for in previous elections, the voters surveyed comported roughly with past results. Almost 60% of the respondents said they voted for Trump in 2020 compared to about 35% who backed Biden.
Trump won Kentucky in 2020 over Biden, 62-36.
Further, a slim majority of those surveyed said they voted for Beshear over former Republican governor Matt Bevin in 2019, 45-44. Beshear only beat Bevin in that race by 0.4 percentage points.
Of note, Cameron led Beshear among women voters 47.6% to 46.9%. Across American politics, women tend to lean Democratic.
Among white voters, who accounted for nearly 86% of those polled, Cameron held a roughly four-point lead over Beshear, 49-45. For Black voters, who made up 7.4% of those surveyed, Beshear led Cameron, who is vying to become the first elected Black Republican governor in U.S. history, 78-16.
A slight plurality of respondents said they were Republican, which is also the case for registered Kentucky voters.
What makes this poll different from others that took into account voters’ partisanship is that Beshear and Cameron had the same amount of crossover appeal: 15.1% of registered Republicans said they were voting for Beshear and 15.1% of registered Democrats said they were voting for Cameron.
According to the poll, Cameron is beating Beshear handily with Kentucky voters ages 50 to 69, Beshear has the advantage with younger voters, and the two are in a similar position with voters 70 or older.
The biggest change between the latest poll and the one conducted in October is Cameron’s support among the 50 to 69 group. Support for the Republican in that group rose by 22 percentage points while Beshear’s numbers dropped by 9 percentage points.
About 54% of those surveyed were reached via landline while 35% responded online. Around 11% were reached via cellphone.
This story was originally published November 3, 2023 at 8:50 AM.
