Poll: Cramer Leads Heikamp by 9 Points

There is scant publicly-available polling in North Dakota’s U.S. Senate race, despite the competition garnering national attention, and that’s been frustrating. While the polling we do have shows Cramer with a strong lead, it’s hard to hang your hat on any conclusions based on few data points.

Today we got another data point. Polling from the Trafalgar Group (which has earned a C rating from FiveThirtyEight.com) shows Cramer with a 9 point lead over Heitkamp:

That’s down significantly from the 16 point lead for Cramer the last public poll conducted by Strategic Research Associates showed, but it’s in line with the 11 point lead for Cramer that Republicans told me yesterday their most recent polling showed.

You can read the full Trafalgar polling memo below.

Here’s a table showing all of the public polling going back to February:

And here’s the trend line:

All the usual caveats about a single poll apply here, but I will say that these results make sense. Heitkamp has a rough news cycle a couple of weeks ago, but since then shes been pouring money into her messaging and as a result the race has tightened.

The question is whether she can move the needle enough to win on election day.

Keep in mind, at this point tens of thousands of North Dakotans have already voted.

[scribd id=392002941 key=key-xsZCxViyyKN7PJR0Fybj mode=scroll]