Herseth gets nod over Diedrich in poll

[ButterflyBlood]

With two months remaining in the campaign for South Dakota's U.S. House seat, Democrat Stephanie Herseth, who ran for the same seat in 2002, has maintained a healthy lead over Republican Larry Diedrich. But Diedrich has been able to cut the gap in half - despite his "unfamiliar" rating of 48 percent - in the seven weeks since the last poll on the race was publicly released.

Herseth leads Diedrich 53.3 percent to 37.1 percent, according to a poll of 501 likely voters conducted last weekend by Zogby International of Utica, N.Y., for South Dakota media outlets, including the Rapid City Journal. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.

Terry Begay, a third-party candidate who ran for the House in 2002, polls at 1.9 percent, and 7.7 percent are undecided.

Of those polled, 48 percent said they were unfamiliar with Diedrich, who has not run for a statewide office before. Twelve percent were unfamiliar with Herseth, who ran unsuccessfully against Republican Bill Janklow in 2002.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2004/04/01/front/top/news01.txt

if we win this seat, we can probably consider the Senate seat to be safe. I think there might be an anti-Janklow backlash coming.

[Wabbajack]

1. The house race has nothing to do with the

Senate race. Different dynamics.

[zorkpolitics]

2. Risk to Daschle?

If Stephanie wins the at large seat, then SD will have no Republican reps in Congress. Ironically this will give Thune a campaign issue against Daschel. He can claim that SD "needs" a Republican voice in the Senate to "represent" SD.

[ButterflyBlood]

3. check out this Argus Leader poll:

?poll (big image, that's why I'm not posting it)

but it says 38% say an all Democrat delegation is positive, 27% say negative, and 29% are neutral.