Poll: George Sinner Trails Kevin Cramer By 20 Points In Potential Matchup

According to North Dakota Democrats, they’ll finally be announcing a US House candidate next week to take on Republican incumbent Rep. Kevin Cramer. Of course, we’ve heard this “next week” stuff before from Democrats before, so I guess we’ll see. The time for dithering is growing short, though. In order to have a candidate on the June primary ballot as a Democrat, paperwork must be filed by April 7th, less than a month from today.

Meanwhile, a conservative group has released polling for a potential matchup between Cramer and state Senatore George Sinner, who is considered the frontrunner for Democrats, and the numbers don’t look good.

In polling conducted from March 5-9th, with a random digit dialing sample of 400 complete interviews and a margin of error of 5 percent, Cramer leads Sinner by 20 points with Libertarian Jack Seaman taking up less than 5 percent of the votes.

Kevin Cramer: 50.25%

George Sinner: 30.50%

Jack Seaman: 3.5%

Undecided: 15%

Refused to answer: 0.75%

The polling was conducted for the Brighter Future Alliance, which was described to me as “a 501c4 non-profit committed to promoting the free enterprise system and pro energy development public policy.”

Previously a Republican source had provided me some polling for a potential matchup between Cramer and USDA Rural Development Director Jasper Schneider. That polling showed an even more lopsided picture, with Cramer leading Schneider by 30 points.

So the source of the polling definitely has an ideological bias. Worth keeping in mind, though to be honest, the results of the poll match up with behavior from Democrats.

In the 2012 cycle Democrats had a House candidate, Pam Gulleson, and a Senate Candidate, Heidi Heitkamp, in the race by the beginning of November in 2011. We’re four months past that mark in the 2014 cycle, and still Democrats have only the promise of a House candidate.

I think it’s safe to assume that, despite public bluster about Cramer’s supposed “extremism,” Democrats are finding the incumbent to be pretty popular with North Dakotans. So much so that haven’t been able to drag a challenger for him into the race so far.

Cramer is facing a Libertarian Party candidate. Jack Seaman announced his candidacy back in October.

Update: Originally this post didn’t include results for Libertarian Party candidate Jack Seaman, undecideds, or those who refused to answer. I’ve updated the post to include that information.