Latest Poll: Bentley Still Leading Sparks

A new poll has been released on the Governor's race, and Republican candidate Robert Bentley is maintaining a substantial lead over Democrat candidate Ron Sparks.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/09/campaign_2010_poll_finds_rober.html

Republican Robert Bentley holds a 13-point lead over Democrat Ron Sparks in the race for gov­ernor, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The poll was conducted by Capital Survey Research Center, the polling arm of the Alabama Education Association, which histori­cally has been aligned with the state's Democratic Party. The poll showed Bentley with 52 percent of the vote to Sparks' 39 per­cent.

It is my opinion that state-level Republican candidates will do well this election. Barring some major change in the political wind, which I do not expect to happen, I predict that Bentley will be the next Governor of Alabama... for good or ill.

But what about the State Legislature?


According to the poll, Republicans have a good shot at taking control of the Legislature. The poll showed that 61% of voters want to see the leadership of the Legislature changed. When asked specifically about party labels, 41% said they were more likely to vote for Republicans this time around... only 37% felt the same way about the Democrats. The remaining 22% are still undecided.

If the news for Demo­crats who want to win back the governor's man­sion is not rosy in this latest poll, Johnson's num­bers won't provide them much comfort when it comes to what arguably is a more important battle on election day, the fight for control of the Alabama Legislature.

Asked if they are "more likely to vote for change in Alabama or vote for main­taining current control," 44 percent of those re­sponding in the poll said they are much more likely to vote for change. An­other 17 percent said they are somewhat more likely to go for change. Only 14 percent said they are much more likely to vote for maintaining current control.

Even when Johnson's survey pointed out that, under 136 years of Democratic Party control of the Legislature, the state has had the nation's lowest taxes, has had a balanced budget every year and has brought the automobile industry to the state, the numbers didn't get much better for Democrats.

Only 29 percent said they were much more likely to vote for Democrats in the fall, with 8 percent saying they were somewhat more likely to vote for Democrats. About 41 percent said they were still somewhat or much more likely to vote for change to Republican Party control of the Legislature.

I will further predict that Republicans will take control of at least one House of the Legislature in November. It could be interesting, with new people in charge of running the Legislature.

One of the things that the GOP has complained about for years is partisan control over scheduling votes on legislation. Hopefully, we'll soon have the opportunity to see if they do better... or if they just do that same things right back to the Democrats.