Franklin & Marshall has released its latest survey of the state, with the numbers for Pat Toomey remaining stable while Tom Corbett is seeing his race tighten somewhat after a week of new ads from Democrat Dan Onorato and their first televised debate this past Monday night.
Toomey leads by 9 among likely voters, while Corbett leads by only 4, making his race more of a dead heat.
“The structural environment for Democrats is still lethal,” Franklin & Marshall pollster and analyst G. Terry Madonna said Tuesday.
“What’s going on is that Dan Onorato has raised his name recognition by 10 percentage points, which is significant,” Madonna said. “Dan has been greatly helped by those commercials, and the Democrats are starting to get their voters motivated.”
In August, 53 percent of voters surveyed said they did not know enough about Onorato to form an opinion. In September, 43 percent of surveyed voters said they did not know enough about the Allegheny County executive to form an opinion.
Related: A Susquehanna poll finds that roughly 11 percent of Pennsylvanians are still undecided in the senate race. It’s not over yet, even if Sestak does have a massive wall to scale.