US House
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October 2, 2018
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Bill Shapard

Tom Cole leads in congressional re-election by more than 33 points

Veteran congressman Tom Cole led his two challengers by a huge margin in the latest SoonerPoll, the largest lead of any congressman or Republican running in the state.

CLICK HERE: for complete topline and crosstab report

Cole led Mary Brannon, the Democratic challenger, by 33.3 percent. Cole, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2002, has never received less than 64 percent of the vote in any re-election. This result is very similar to the generic ballot test performed earlier this year.

[QUESTION] If the November general election for UNITED STATES CONGRESS were TODAY and you were standing in the voting booth right now and had to make a choice, for whom would you vote?

1. Tom Cole, the Republican 58.0%
2. Mary Brannon, the Democrat 24.7
3. Rudy Peters, an Independent 5.7
3. Don't know/Refused [DNR] 11.6

Cole gains the support of 82.4 percent of Republican voters and 32 percent of Democratic voters while only giving up 1.6 percent to Brannon, giving him a whooping 30.4 percent net positive party crossover advantage. This was the largest crossover advantage for any Republican on the ballot. The fourth congressional district has the second highest percentage of Democrats, 41.5 percent of the electorate.

Eighty-one percent of self-identified conservatives supported Cole, but trailed slightly among moderate voters, 37.5 to 42.4 percent for Brannon.

Cole bested Brannon among men and women voters, evangelicals, those that attend church weekly or more, and every age group.

About the Poll

SoonerPoll.com, Oklahoma’s public opinion pollster, conducted the poll of Oklahoma likely voters in the 4th congressional district, and was commissioned by News9 and Newson6.

The scientific study was conducted September 15-25, 2018 with 291 likely voters selected at random from a tri-frame of SoonerPoll's own online panel, cell phones and landline telephones. For cell phone and landline telephones, voters are selected at random from SoonerPoll's voter database and matched with cell and landline phone numbers.  Cell phone participants are collected using live interviewers and landline participants are collected using both live interviewer and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology. The sample was weighted by age, gender and political party in order to reflect the Oklahoma likely voter population in the 4th congressional district.

The study has a Margin of Error (MoE) of ±5.74 percent.

Bill Shapard
About the Author

Bill Shapard

Bill is the founder of SoonerPoll.com and ShapardResearch, a full service market research firm based in Oklahoma City. Bill began his career in polling after working on major campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats in Oklahoma from 1996 until founding SoonerPoll in 2004.