New Poll Shows Corbett Chipping Away At Wolf's Lead In Race For Governor
By Tim Jimenez
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- We're less than one week away from election day and a new poll shows Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett gaining a little bit of ground on Democratic challenger Tom Wolf.
According to the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll, Wolf now has a 13 point lead over Governor Corbett among likely voters. Corbett was once trailing by more than 20 points.
Poll director Terry Madonna says the governor is now doing better among those in his own party.
"He is winning back Republican voters," he says, voters that he did not have willing to vote for him earlier in the election cycle."
Madonna also says Corbett had strong debate performances, including one broadcast on KYW Newsradio, and his campaign is hitting Wolf's progressive tax plan and its lack of specifics.
"Is an issue that the governor's campaign has been able to exploit. Portraying Tom Wolf as, generically, a tax and spend liberal," he says. "Specifically that he has a progressive income tax plan that will raise state income taxes considerably higher than it is at the current time and that the middle class will bear the brunt of that. That's been an ongoing debate between the two candidates."
So, in this non-Presidential election year, Madonna says turnout, especially in Philadelphia, is critical for Wolf.
"Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and before the end of the campaign, President Obama, in the city," he says, "campaigning largely with a turnout message."
Wolf maintains a double-digit lead, and Madonna says history isn't on Governor Corbett's side as election day gets closer.
"The governor probably needs a song and a prayer," he says, "to somehow figure out a way to come back from a double-digit gap."
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