Poll: In Final Weeks, Wolf Leads Corbett By 17 Points

By Alison Smith:

With four weeks until Election Day, Tom Wolf is ahead of Gov. Tom Corbett by 17 points, a poll released Tuesday finds.

The Democratic challenger leads Corbett 55 to 38 percent in a poll of likely voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday morning.

Those numbers reflect a slight gain for Corbett; a September Quinnipiac poll found that Wolf had a 59 to 35 percent lead over Corbett.

“With a slight shift in the numbers as a handful of Republicans come back, there is a pinprick of light at the end of the long, dark reelection tunnel, but time is not on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s side,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “It’s a matter of simple math and the ticking clock and both are working against Gov. Corbett.”

The Quinnipiac poll found that Wolf leads Corbett among women (59 to 34 percent); among men (51 to 42 percent); among independents (49 to 40 percent); and among Democrats (87 to 7 percent).

Corbett leads Wolf among likely Republican voters, 75 to 22 percent. That’s “one of the lowest rates of same-party support for an incumbent governor in any of the nine states surveyed by Quinnipiac University,” the poll found.

The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5. Live interviewers called both cell phones and landlines, and surveyed 907 likely voters. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, Quinnipiac said.