Rob Horowitz: Latest Poll Contains Good News for Cicilline
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
If all one knows about a Congressional primary is that a relatively unknown challenger is in a nearly dead heat with the incumbent and 20 percent of the voters are still undecided with more than three months to go, one would think that is great news for the challenger. In fact, one might gently encourage the incumbent's staffers to start polishing their resumes.
However, in the unusual circumstances that define Rhode Island’s first Congressional district race, a recent WPRI poll putting U.S. Rep. David Cicilline at 40 percent and Anthony Gemma at 36 percent in the primary horse race actually provides some good news for the incumbent.
For the past 18 months or so, Congressman Cicilline has received the most negative media coverage of any politician that I can recall who hasn’t been indicted or been at the center of a major scandal.
The source of this negative attention is the contrast between then-Mayor Cicilline’s rosy description of the state of Providence’s finances and the difficult fiscal situation inherited by Cicilline's successor as Mayor, Angel Taveras( full disclosure: I served as an advisor on the Taveras’ Mayoral campaign). This contrast created major credibility problems for the new Congressman and undermined one of his major selling points -- that he was an excellent Mayor who brought sound management to a troubled city.
As any political watcher knows, the horse race, rather than issue positions, tends to dominate political coverage. Fueling the intense, critical media attention was a series of polls that recorded precipitous drops in Cicillines’ approval and favorability ratings. As a result, Cicilline was caught in a negative feedback loop. Negative coverage triggered bad poll ratings which then triggered more negative coverage as reporters, pollsters and pundits were called upon to explain why Cicilline’s poll numbers were so low.
One would think from the media coverage that the only issue that mattered to first district voters in 2012 was Cicilline misleading voters about the Providence budget during the 2010 campaign. However, when likely primary voters were asked to pick whether Providence finances, character, best chances to win, experience or jobs/economy was the most important issue in deciding their vote, nearly half picked jobs and the economy while less than one-in-ten opted for Providence finances.
It is true that that in this poll question-- cleverly designed by WPRI pollster Joe Fleming---another three in 10 likely voters chose character which one could argue is connected to Cicilline’s credibility problem. Overall, however, these results bode well for Cicilline who has concrete and popular legislative proposals for fixing the economy and should serve as a wake-up call to the media that broader more multi-dimensional coverage of this campaign is what is needed going forward.
The poll contains other good news for Cicilline, including the fact that his lead increases when only those most likely to vote are counted and that his approval rating among Democrats has increased from previous polls.
Most importantly, Cicilline has survived an extended period of saturation-level critical coverage and now stands to benefit as the campaign debate widens to include national issues where Cicilline is more in tune with primary voters than the more conservative Gemma and more aligned with general election voters than the Republican candidate Brendan Doherty. Cicilline’s Providence problems are not going away, but they are unlikely to dominate the debate going forward as they have the last eighteen months.
That is why, despite some premature political obituaries, David Cicilline is very much alive and kicking and stands a good chance of holding on to his seat.
Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
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Comments:
anthony sionni
8:34am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Good news???? Are you kidding me??? Cicilline was mayor for 8 years and congressman for nearly 2 years and he is in nearly a dead heat with Gemma,I wouldnt call that good news for ciciline lol. I would say thats good news for Gemma!!!
I think Gemma has a big lead over cicilline!
Bernie McCrink
8:47am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
So what you are saying is an incumbent Congressman in a statistical dead-heat with a primary opponent is good news for the Congressman?
Cicilline is done. If Gemma doesn't take him out, Doherty will. People are sick of the lying, incompetence, and phoniness of the little weasel. Let him die a slow political death. He represents everything that is wrong in RI and politics in general.
guy smily
9:11am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
I hear you were rooting for Iran during the Olympics!
Oberon Sexton
10:18am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Didn't Gemma say he wouldn't even have to compete against Cicilline for the nomination? Based on that, anything showing Cicilline within striking distance would have been a victory for his camp. At this point, Gemma's campaign is little more than a vanity project.
John Locke
12:30pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Only in RI would a former staffer for an elected official that endorsed an embattled congressman would be able to go on a news site and try to make a poll showing that congressman is in a dead heat with a candidate who has only been running for a few weeks is a good thing. Cicilline has been running for reelection for two years and is up 3 points from when he won the primary two years ago. 40% could very likely be his ceiling and if it is then Gemma is right to ignore him and focus on Doherty.
Russ Hryzan
1:28pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
"Hasn't been in the middle of a scandal"?
Merriam-Webster defines a scandal as: "loss of or damage to reputation caused by actual or apparent violation of morality or propriety"
Cicilline's outright lying (on tape) about the fiscal condition of the city, and his blocking of auditors' access to city financial data prior to the election certainly qualifies as a scandal by definition, let alone all fo the other crooked things that went on under him in city hall.
The only thing that would be good news for Cissy would be Obama appointing him as Ambassador to Antarctica, a continent with no people for him to lie to and screw over.
jon paycheck
5:13pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Cicvilini is sweating bullets!!
Charles Drago
5:19pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Rob Horowitz's credentials as a political analyst derive from the fact that he managed not one but TWO failed gubernatorial campaigns for David Cicilline's biggest booster, Myrth York.
Horowitz is a bought-and-paid-for Cicilline pimp, pure and simple.
Horowitz opines as his mistress Myrth instructs him to opine.
Horowitz is a waste of time. Like David Cicilline, nothing that comes out of his mouth is to be believed.
Christopher Lee
11:30pm on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Is anyone in charge at golocalprov.com? Apparently not. How else can you explain Rob Horowitz's garbage masquerading as news.
Dan McGowan
6:15am on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Thanks for reading, everyone. Chris, we make it very clear that Rob is an opinion writer for us, just as Travis Rowley, Don Roach and Donna Perry are.
If you would like to submit an op-ed, we encourage you to do so as well. Feel free to e-mail me at dmcgowan@golocalprov.com.
Best,
Dan
vinny coia
12:11pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
your biased , liberal reporting is awful journalistically , and attempted positive spin on all things cicilline are actually payhetic and nauseating . try implementing just a little
truth into your articles . your appearances on lively experiment , as you journalism
in this media , are just to advance your biased agenda . enough already .
Charles Drago
12:24pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
There's nothing wrong with bias -- until, that is, you attempt to hide it and imply that the talking points it motivates are really just the well-informed opinions of, in this case, a seasoned political observer.
Horowitz is a York/Cicilline hack -- and a bad one, given his track record of failure in two -- count 'em, two -- gubernatorial elections.
Declare yourself, Horowitz, for what you are. In the process, you'll be demonstrating courage and noble convictions that your master David Cicilline couldn't define, let alone exhibit.
Charles Drago
12:30pm on Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Oberon Sexton -- a comic book villain, by the way, and thus an apt choice of pseudonym for the David Cicilline pimp who last appeared with frequency in these pages during the 2010 election cycle -- is as believable as the lying master he/she/they serve(s).
( http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Oberon_Sexton_(New_Earth) )
The character of Oberon, based on much earlier tales, is also the fairy king in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Melissa Enos
2:25pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
"concrete and popular legislative proposals for fixing the economy"- like the ones he used while Mayor of Providence? Uh oh....