Jefferson City, Mo. — A new poll conducted by Emerson College was released Tuesday and gives more insight to both the Republican and Democratic primaries that will take place a week from today.
Emerson’s poll backs up a recent trend of Republican polling. Current attorney general Eric Schmitt leads the poll, with 33% of the “very likely” vote. Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler is in a distant second place with 21%. Embattled former Gov. Eric Greitens continues his slide in polling with 16%.
Unlike other polls, this one shows Hartzler 12% behind first place, more beyond reach than other polling results. Trafalgar and Remington both released polls yesterday showing the Congresswoman following close behind Schmitt.
Like Trafalgar, Emerson is rated as a reputable pollster, getting an A- rating from FiveThirtyEight.
But the poll also has more numbers that could switch the tide, even as the race enters its last week.
Like Monday’s Trafalgar poll, Emerson’s polled a large swath of unsure voters, 17% of Emerson respondents were “undecided”.
The poll also shows that 41% of voters “are more likely to support a candidate that has Donald Trump’s endorsement.” So far the former President has decided to not endorse a candidate in the race. He has directly declared he won’t endorse Hartzler. Should Schmitt get a Trump endorsement, the primary would essentially be over.
Greitens’ path to the nomination appears it may hinge on an endorsement from Trump.
Emerson’s poll gives some long-overdue data for the Democrat primary Trudy Busch Valentine, the heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune, leads the poll with 39% of the “very likely” vote.
Lucas Kunce, a veteran and former Pentagon staffer, is in second with 35% of the vote. Leaving him well within striking distance. The game changer in this poll is a whopping 22% of undecided voters.
The Democratic primary is still very much a tight race. However, Emerson’s poll is the first for the Kunce and Busch Valentine race, only so much can be learned from just one poll.
The poll itself was done by Emerson College and was conducted this past weekend, from July 21-23. The sample size was 1,000 with a margin of error of +/- 3%.
According to Emerson College, “the data sets were weighted by gender, age, education, region, and mode based on 2022 turnout modeling.” They also mentioned how these subsets of data can lead to higher margin of errors as well. The data was collected using a cellphone sample using SMS-to-web and an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines.
Featured Image: STL Today
Kelton is a 2023 graduate of the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies. He is a native of mid-Missouri and likes to write politics at both the state and federal levels. Kelton joined the Missouri Times in April 2022
