Mike Ramone’s internal polling contrasts with less favorable UD survey

By Bradley Vasoli

Delaware House Minority Leader Mike Ramone (R-Pike Creek) sees reason for optimism in his gubernatorial campaign’s internal data, despite a bearish  University of Delaware survey.

Ramone’s pollster says he can win if he gets his message out to Delawareans.

The representative is vying for the governorship against New Castle County Executive Matthew Meyer (D). UD’s poll, conducted largely online by the company YouGov between September 11 and September 19, showed Meyer besting Ramone 51 percent to 32.3 percent with a 5.76-percent margin of error.

His showing in the survey slightly exceeded that of other Republicans running statewide. Businessman and retired policeman John Whalen got only 30.9 percent against state Senator Sarah McBride’s (D-Wilmington) 52 percent.

Republican corporate executive Eric Hansen received only 31.6 percent of respondents support for his U.S. Senate bid, while Democratic At-Large Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester got 52.1 percent. Independent anesthesiologist Mike Katz received 6.1 percent.

UD found that 55.6 percent of its participants support Vice President Kamala Harris, while only 35.9 percent back Donald Trump, a typical result in a state that has gone for the Democratic White House aspirant every time since 1992.

Mike Ramone still sees a path to victory

A survey Ramone commissioned nonetheless suggests he could win, provided he robustly impresses his profile and message upon the electorate in the days remaining before November 5. His campaign provided the top-line memorandum on the study, which begins with a promising summary.

“Mike Ramone has the right experience and ideological profile to be the first Republican Delaware Governor in a generation,” wrote Robert Blizzard of the Arlington, VA-based UpONE Insights, which oversaw the poll. “If the Ramone campaign has the necessary resources to continue to build his brand statewide and showcase a strong contrast with Matt Meyer, this race will be very competitive.”

The UpONE memo noted that more Delaware voters knew enough about Meyer to register an opinion than knew enough about Ramone when the poll was fielded from September 24 through 26. But the survey of 400 registered voters indicated hope for the Republican: Just as 29 percent said they viewed Meyer favorably, compared with Ramone’s 20 percent, Meyer’s unfavorable rating also surpassed Ramone’s, 14 percent to six percent.

Both polls find the latter competitive among nonpartisan Delawareans, with UD showing Ramone tying Meyer at 36.5 percent for their support. And Ramone’s memo predicts undecided voters will “break heavily toward him.”

Blizzard wrote that should the House Republican leader’s messaging effort prove formidable, the moderate Ramone is poised to succeed in November. After tests of messaging were administered regarding the candidate’s background as a small businessman and his positions on issues like economics, education, and abortion, poll respondents gave Ramone 54 percent to Meyer’s 31 percent.

“On the streets, you can feel that; I can feel that,” Ramone told Delaware Live last week. “I can see that there’s a movement going on. There’s a lot of momentum.”

He cited a combative primary between Meyer and scandal-plagued Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long as an ongoing source of difficulty for the Democratic nominee. He also noted that Meyer, if elected, would be the first governor in recent memory who never held a position in state government. Ramone touted his 16 years of experience in Dover and his success running businesses employing more than 200 First Staters.

Meyer campaign manager Nick Merlino said he believes his boss’s experience at the helm of the state’s largest local government is an asset to which voters are reacting warmly. Merlino also thought little of Ramone’s polling assertions, noting Meyer’s own internal numbers as well as public polling show high favorability for the Democrat.

“There’s enough publicly available evidence to suggest that it’s pretty clear that voters like Matt,” Merlino said.

Previous UD survey results

Despite the rosy scenario in Ramone’s poll, UD’s Center for Political Communication has a strong track record of foretelling Delaware statewide elections.

Suppose UD now overestimates Republicans’ underdog status. In that case, it will do so for the first time since 2018, when Senator Tom Carper (D) underperformed his UD polling of 61 percent by two points as he sought reelection that year. Sussex County Councilman Rob Arlett (R) outdid a dismal 24-percent prognosis, receiving 14 more points than that at the ballot box. Blunt Rochester, meanwhile, improved upon the 58 percent support discovered by the September 2018 poll, getting 64 percent instead.

All other Democratic statewide candidates in UD’s poll since 2016 did at least as well as the university’s results anticipated. Those include presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in 2016, Governor John Carney in 2020, Senator Chris Coons in 2020 and Attorney General Kathy Jennings in 2022.

Republicans also outperformed their poll numbers in each of those instances, with many undecided voters eventually backing them.

UD Center for Political Communication director Danna Young said it’s difficult to say whether Republicans will again get a greater share of undecided voters this year or whether GOP voters are more reticent to state their candidate preferences.

“While there is certainly evidence of the ‘shy Republican voters’ in national polls in past elections, it’s not clear that this is what is happening in our recent poll,” she told Delaware Live via email. “In our sample, our undecideds are overwhelmingly independent voters, of whom, some certainly lean conservative… but unless there is reason to believe that Independent voters in Delaware lean disproportionately conservative, then it’s unclear how this will shake out on Election Day. I guess wait and see is the name of the game!”

Word of mouth on other possible data

Ramone said his campaign learned of more optimistic data on his race last weekend. He said he heard that a person or third-party entity commissioned a poll that found him “neck and neck” with Meyer, though his source did not divulge that survey’s provenance.

The Independent Katz, a former Democratic State Senator, meanwhile told Delaware Live his self-funded, low-budget campaign commissioned a survey that remarkably shows him within a 2.91-percent margin of error against Blunt Rochester. He said his poll compares favorably with UD’s regarding the latter’s sample size and participation rate (39.2 percent).

Katz, however, did not provide hard numbers or the name of the company he used. He opined that his data-oriented medical background gives him a strong vantage point to assess the UD study.

“We call that [UD poll] essentially junk science,” he said. “It’s almost propaganda-like” in favor of the two major parties.

Young explained that fielding a survey of more than 400 Delawareans is beyond the capability of almost any pollster and that a 39.2 percent is “pretty darned good” for an internet-based poll. She stood by her university’s work.

“…Public opinion polling is a complex art and gets more and more difficult as people become harder to reach,” she wrote. “There is always uncertainty in every polling estimate, but we’re proud of our track record and (fingers crossed) haven’t received too much pushback over the years.”