The October 8 TvPoll for KWTV CBS-News 9 reveals continued strong support for Brad Henry in the coming November election.  The popular approval of the President and the Governor continue, and Henry continues to be in the driver’s seat for reelection. Other statewide constitutional offices are generally competitive, though evidence of a Democratic shift are present.  The instrument, toplines, and complete crosstabs are linked at the bottom of this post.

Executive Approval: The Republican campaign, critical of the governor’s record on immigration issues, has not move the Governor’s job approval numbers. In fact, Henry enjoys very high job approval among most Oklahoma voters.  Henry’s overall approval is 75.5%, and his “strongly approve” number is 47.7%, which is very high even for an incumbent governor.  The “strongly disapprove” number for Henry’s job performance is only 7.7%. 

The overall Henry approval rating has not moved significantly since two weeks ago, but the “strongly approve” number has jumped six points in two weeks.

Approval for President Bush continues in Oklahoma, though the president’s rating is off by 4.3 points from two weeks ago.  Bush’s overall job approval rating is 57.6% among Oklahoma voters, but his strong approval has slipped from almost 40% to 32.9% in two weeks.  The Strong disapprove number is up significantly from 24.9% to 28.4% this week.

In addition to questions about incumbent executive job approval, we queried the favorable perception of Republican gubernatorial challenger Ernest Istook. The Republican congressman from Warr Acres enjoys an overall favorable rating of 49.7% compared to 41.1% unfavorable, and his “strong favorable” posted at 21.8% while his “strong unfavorable” is 17.2%.  Just over 9% of respondents had formed no opinion of Istook.

Governor:  Brad Henry continues to show a very strong lead over Ernest Istook.  Henry is polling 59.5% (+4.0 from two weeks ago) while Istook continues at a third of the vote (33.2%) practically unchanged from two weeks ago.  There is a 7.3% undecided, indicating that all of the movement has been toward the Governor. 

Henry leads among men (53-41), women (65-25), all but the most conservative voters (who favor Istook 73-20), and also commands 27% of Republican votes in the ballot test.  Only the most frequent church-goers do not show solid majority support for a Henry candidacy for reelection, and even among those identifiers Henry is statistically tied with Mr. Istook.

Lt. Governor: This remains the highest-profile and most competitive race in Oklahoma. Jari Askins has opened up a statistically-significant lead over Todd Hiett, 48.0% to 41.3%, while E. Z. Million continued to poll in the margin of error at 1.7%.   About two-thirds of the undecideds are female voters.

Attorney General: Incumbent Drew Edmondson enjoys a sizeable 54.9% to 30.2% lead over James Dunn. This is a statistically-significant gain over two weeks ago. 

State Labor Commissioner:  This contest is a rematch of four years ago, when Lloyd Fields was narrowly edged by three-term incumbent Reneau.  The incumbent Republican’s lead is narrowing, as she polls just 44.0% to Fields’ 36.1%.  This is a substantial shift in the balance of this race, as Reneau is off by 6.5 points and Fields us up 7.9 points, closing a 20+ point gap to less than eight. 

Insurance Commissioner: No state insurance commissioner has survived for two full terms in the last fifteen years, and the resignation of Democrat Carroll Fisher brought Kim Holland to the office.  The race, which has been low profile, continues to be wide open.  Challenger Bill Case-R is polling 36.2%, effectively unchanged from two weeks ago, while Democrat Holland firms up her support, jumping to 35.6% from and into a statistical tie.  As we noted last week, the sizeable undecided indicates that the short campaign and partisan tendencies could determine this race, and also the race for state auditor (below).

State Auditor: Four years ago, Democrat Jeff McMahan edged our Republican Gary Jones by a couple of votes per box.  Now an incumbent, this low profile race appears to be competitive, but shifting to the favor of McMahan.  McMahan is polling 39.5% -- a jump from 32.8% two weeks ago – while Jones is essentially unchanged at 35.4% compared to polling 36.3% two weeks ago. 

State Treasurer:  Scott Meacham  (Democrat), appointed treasurer by Gov. Henry, opened up his lead over Howard Barnett from nine-points two weeks ago to twelve points in our latest poll (46.8% to 34.1%). This race has the smallest undecided of any down-ticket race without an elected incumbent. Meacham is in striking range of a majority and continues his strong ties to the popular incumbent governor. 

Corporation Commissioner: Incumbent Republican Bob Anthony enjoys a lead of just over six points over challenger Cody Graves, 45.7% to 39.1%.  This places Anthony closer to his challenger than any other incumbent seeking reelection this year. 

Interesting “Bore-Into-The-Data” Factoid:  When you look at Republicans who go to church at least weekly, who are also at least somewhat conservative (about a quarter of the electorate), you learn a lot about the challenge for Ernest Istook. Within this group, Istook has a  77% “favorable” rating and a 45.2% “very favorable.” While subset analysis with a subsample  this small requires some caution, a simple difference emerges between Istook and other Republican candidates: personal favorability is related to the willingness to vote for Istook among conservative, Republican, generally church-going voters. The table below compares Istook’s support within this group, across his favorable/ unfavorable, to three other types of Republicans: a challenger to an elected incumbent (Jones, for Auditor), a challenger to an appointed incumbent (Case, for Insurance commissioner), and an open seat candidate (Hiett for Lt. Governor): 

Candidate	Istook Very Favorable	Istook Somewhat Favorable	Istook Unfavorable/ Don’t Know
Vote for Istook (Gov)	96.8%	61.2%	43.7%
Vote for Hiett (LtGov)	89.5%	89.6%	69.3%
Vote for Case (InsComm)	86.3%	67.2%	63.3%
Vote for Jones (Audit)	88.4%	70.1%	60.4%

Istook runs strong among those who think highly favorably of him, as do the other three Republicans.  However, when we move to the third of the core GOP electorate who think “somewhat favorably” of Istook, he runs behind both the low-profile Case and Jones and also well behind the Hiett campaign.  Among those with an unfavorable or unformed impression of Istook, he runs from 16 to 25 points behind the other Republicans.