In Polling Average, Kevin Cramer Leads George Sinner By 8.5 Points

Earlier today Democrat House candidate George Sinner got some ugly polling news. A University of North Dakota poll commissioned by the Fargo Forum found the challenger trailing incumbent Republican Kevin Cramer by 19 points.

Of course, when I spoke to someone with the Cramer campaign even they acknowledged that their lead isn’t that high (they’re expecting about a 10 point margin of victory), but still. Even if the poll is off by ten points, that still has Cramer with a comfortable margin.

In response Sinner – who is now acknowledging on the campaign trail that national Demcorats have abandoned his campaign – sent out this fundraising pitch to Democrats touting a Mellman poll from last month which showed him leading by two points.

You know, the poll that claimed to survey registered voters in North Dakota, a state without voter registration.

It’s ironic that the Sinner campaign has never officially released this poll. They’ve never posted it on their website or their social media, nor have they released it to the media. Even when questioned today about the Forum’s polling showing a 19 point lead for Cramer, Sinner didn’t bring his poll up.

The campaign has only “leaked” it to a national Politico reporter and touted it in their fundraising pitches, like the one above.

But even if we stipulate to the poll’s veracity (and given that the campaign won’t answer questions about the registered voters problem we probably shouldn’t), Cramer still seems to be leading this race pretty handily.

There have been four polls in the race so far. Two from Republican sources (Odney and the WPA), one from a Demcorat source (Mellman), and one from the media (Forum/UND). Averaging the results together, Cramer has an 8.5 point advantage over Sinner with Libertarian Party candidate Jack Seaman taking up about 3.5 points and about 16.5 percent of voters undecided.

Republicans would probably be more comfortable if Cramer were above 50 percent, and there weren’t so many undecideds, but it seems clear that this is Cramer’s race to lose.