Today, Mason Dixon released a poll looking at Mississippians thoughts of President Trump, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker. 625 “regular voters” were polled for the overall poll. Then a smaller subsection of 400 regular Republican voters were polled on the specifics of a 2018 potential primary matchup.
There are not a ton of surprises. Trump has a 51% approval rating, but when you drill down, he’s still wildly popular with Mississippi Republican voters (86%).
Thad Cochran enjoys a 54% approval rate with 64% of Republican voters with high support. Roger Wicker has a lower approval rate (51%), but is trusted more by Republican voters than Cochran with a 70% approval.
Mason Dixon also polled a hypothetical matchup between US Senator Roger Wicker and State Senator Chris McDaniel. Wicker enjoyed a +16 point margin. Just to put that in context, in 2013, McDaniel had been announced for two months at this time. A Gravis poll had him in a dead heat with Cochran at that point in time. A PPP poll, which are admittedly left-leaning and generally unreliable, had Cochran +6 in November 2013.
My two takeaways
1. McDaniel is not where he was at this point in 2013 and he’s obviously not running in the same environment or against the same candidate.
2. If McDaniel does hop in, it’ll be a race to convince GOP voters that they’re for Trump and Trump’s for them.
Poll embedded below.
Mason Dixon Mississippi Poll 122017 by yallpolitics on Scribd
