Gallagher gaining ground, poll says

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, July 15, 2004 | 9:40 a.m.

Democratic congressional candidate Tom Gallagher released a poll Wednesday indicating he has made major gains after an expensive three-week advertising blitz.

In a poll of 400 likely voters, 40 percent said they would vote for Gallagher, leaving him 6 percentage points behind Republican incumbent Jon Porter.

That's much improved from the 27-point lead Porter held in a poll commissioned in April by the Gallagher campaign.

Gallagher's consultants credited the large number of ads run in the past few weeks. The average television viewer should have seen the ads five or six times, said Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who is working on Gallagher's campaign.

The ads are designed to show that Gallagher, who is a former gaming executive, came from humble roots, Yang said.

"He understands the problems," Yang said. "He didn't grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth."

Back in April, before the advertisements, just 29 percent of people polled said they recognized Gallagher's name. In the July poll, 74 percent of people recognized his name.

Republicans outnumber Democrats by just 1,050 in the district, so the 46,329 non-partisans in the district could help make the difference in the race.

In April Gallagher trailed Porter among "unaffiliated" voters, 47 percent to 18 percent. Now, he leads Porter among independent voters, with 39 percent saying they'll vote for Gallagher and 33 percent planning to vote for Porter.

Both polls included a mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents that reflected the makeup of the district, Yang said.

Voters in the polls were asked early in the interview which candidate they preferred, with both candidates simply being identified by their party, Yang said. It was not, he said, a so-called push poll, in which questions are designed to lead voters to give a certain answer.

While the Gallagher campaign would not release how much it spent on its advertising campaign, federal finance reports filed this week show the campaign spent more than $167,000 on a "media buy."

Gallagher still has almost $550,000 in cash on hand, though Porter has more than $1.1 million in cash on hand.