Moving on to the Governor's race for this year, it looks pretty wide open for both the Republican primary and the general election. The leader for the GOP nomination is 'undecided' at 34%. 5 candidates have measurable amounts of support at this point- Ken Bennett at 20%, Christine Jones at 16%, Scott Smith at 12%, Andrew Thomas at 9%, and Doug Ducey at 6%. Al Melvin, John Molina, and Frank Riggs all register at 1% in the poll.
The high level of indecision among GOP primary voters speaks to what unknowns these candidates are with voters in the state. Thomas is the best known, but even he has just 40% name recognition. Despite serving in statewide office Bennett and Ducey have only 31% and 25% name recognition respectively, and none of the rest are over 25%.
In hypothetical general election contests between Democratic candidate Fred DuVal (who has just 27% name recognition) and the Republican field, no candidate ever gets more than 40%. DuVal trails Scott Smith (39/33) and Ken Bennett (37/33) but leads the rest of the GOP hopefuls- it's 36/35 over Doug Ducey, 35/32 over John Molina, 36/32 over Frank Riggs, 37/33 over Christine Jones, 37/32 over Al Melvin, and 40/35 over Andrew Thomas. Overall the race has to be considered a toss up at this point.
We also looked at one other statewide race for this fall- Attorney General- and found Democratic challenger Felicia Rotellini starting out with a 42/36 advantage over incumbent Republican Tom Horne in a rematch of their close 2010 contest.
Brewer's approval rating stands at 44/42 and that +2 spread is almost identical to the +1 she had at 47/46 the last time PPP polled on her in October of 2012. She's down slightly with Republicans from the last poll (72/18 then, 66/22 now), but up slightly with Democrats (14/82 then, 20/62 now).
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2014/03/arizona-supports-brewer-veto-gay-marriage.html
