By Austin Huguelet
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
CHEYENNE – A new poll released Wednesday showed Jackson financier Foster Friess and State Treasurer Mark Gordon in a virtual dead heat for the GOP gubernatorial nomination with less than a week to go before primary day.
The survey of 1,775 likely GOP primary voters between Saturday and Tuesday came from the right-leaning Trafalgar Group, a Georgia firm known for accurately predicting Donald Trump would win states expected to go for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The results were as follows: Friess, 21 percent; Gordon, 20 percent; Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman, 16.2 percent; Cheyenne businessman Sam Galeotos, 9.5 percent; Laramie doctor Taylor Haynes, 5.7 percent, and Sheridan businessman Bill Dahlin, 2.2 percent.
Taken at face value, the poll shows a surge in support for Friess, who took just 6.6 percent of mock votes in a mid-June poll by the University of Wyoming.
Hageman, who has gone after Gordon and Galeotos in critical ads recently, also appears on the rise, gaining 5.5 points.
Longtime frontrunner Gordon looks in danger of stalling, gaining only one point over the June results.
But the poll is no final word on the race: The gap between Friess and Gordon was within the survey’s margin of error, and roughly 20 percent of respondents were still undecided.
The 5.5 percent of respondents who said they voted early also complicate things: 36 percent of them “leaned” toward Gordon and 24 percent “leaned” toward Friess, potentially narrowing the gap between the men to a half a percentage point.
Brian Harnisch, a senior research scientist at UW’s Survey and Analysis Center, also urged residents to take Wednesday’s survey with a grain of salt, citing a low response rate and failure to use some industry best practices.
“This is not a very robust poll,” he said.
Harnisch allowed the Friess campaign could take the swing as a sign its advertising blitz and grueling meet-and-greet schedule are working, though.
But Jim King, a UW political science professor, said he saw typical tightening of a competitive race close to the finish line.
“The previous poll was done before the campaign had really heated up and got a lot of attention,” he said. “People have learned a lot more since then.”
He added, “Basically you’ve got a three-way race going on with any of the top candidates in a position to win.”
Friess took the results as Harnisch predicted, trumpeting them in the Daily Caller – in which he was an early investor – as evidence he was resonating as an everyman ready to fight for the “little guy.”
Hageman was also pleased, saying the results showed her campaign was “right where we want to be heading into election day.”
But Gordon spokeswoman Kristin Walker implied Friess, the top fundraiser in the race, bought the poll, saying it was “certainly not consistent with any data we’ve seen or that has been publicly released so far.”
The Friess campaign and the Trafalgar Group denied the allegation; Friess will have to file campaign expenditures within 10 days of the primary.