Poll: McCain leads Kirkpatrick by double digits in Arizona's U.S. Senate race

Incumbent Sen. John McCain has a healthy lead over challenger Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona's marquee U.S. Senate race, according to a new Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll.

McCain, R-Ariz., who is seeking a sixth Senate term, is leading Kirkpatrick, a three-term congresswoman from Flagstaff, 51.5 percent to 40 percent, with 8.5 percent preferring someone else.

The statewide telephone poll of 587 likely Arizona voters, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, was conducted Oct. 10 through Oct.15, after McCain officially yanked his support from Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who was revealed to have made vulgar comments about women, and appeared to trivialize sexual assault, in a 2005 recording.

McCain and Kirkpatrick also faced off in the race's one-and-only debate on the evening of Oct. 10, the first day the pollsters were in the field.

MORE: About the Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll

The survey also found McCain leading Kirkpatrick in Maricopa and Pima counties, the two largest in the state, and across the rest of greater Arizona. He also leads Kirkpatrick among all age groups and is outpacing her among independents 51.7 percent to 37.2 percent, although the margin of error for the sub-sample of independents is plus or minus 8.4 percentage points.

According to the poll, 19.3 percent of voters still don't know enough about Kirkpatrick to have an opinion about her, or else refused to answer. That's down from the 30.4 percent who said they didn't know enough about her in a Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll conducted in late August.

But on Monday, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign announced that it is investing an additional $2 million into its advertising effort in Arizona as part of a strategy that also could give a boost to down-ticket Democrats such as Kirkpatrick. Three big-name Clinton surrogates — first lady Michelle Obama, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and daughter Chelsea Clinton — this week are campaigning across Arizona. 

"Clinton is going to put money into Arizona, but I don't know that it's going to help Kirkpatrick, because one of Kirkpatrick's problems is that McCain tends to get votes she needs," said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes U.S. Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C. "Voters are used to voting for McCain. They know who he is. She's run a good campaign, but I think he's run a better one."

Gary Swing, a Green Party candidate from Tucson, is on the Nov. 8 Senate ballot but was not mentioned in the poll.

Reacting to the scientific Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News survey, the Kirkpatrick campaign countered that it believes the race is tightening and that Kirkpatrick has the momentum. They pointed to an online survey published Tuesday in the Washington Post that gave McCain only a 3-percentage-point lead.

The Kirkpatrick campaign also has highlighted the negative national publicity that McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, generated Monday by saying Senate Republicans would unite to block Clinton's Supreme Court nominees just as they have done with President Barack Obama's pending election-year nomination of Merrick Garland. 

A McCain spokeswoman later clarified that McCain would "thoroughly examine the record of any Supreme Court nominee put before the Senate and vote for or against that individual based on their qualifications as he has done throughout his career."

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"Arizonans are fed up with John McCain's self-serving doublespeak, and they're just not buying it," D.B. Mitchell, Kirkpatrick's campaign spokesman, said in a written statement. "His message of more broken government in Washington is as dangerous as his more than 60 endorsements of Donald Trump for more than a year. As the Washington Post's latest poll shows, this race is one of the most competitive in the country. Arizonans are ready to vote for new, principled leadership and send Ann Kirkpatrick to the Senate."

However, Lorna Romero, McCain's campaign spokeswoman, called the Republic poll "another indicator of the tremendous support for John McCain as we enter the final weeks of this campaign." She said the momentum is on the side of McCain, whose campaign has four field offices that have made more than 4 million voter contacts this election cycle.

"No matter how hard Congresswoman Kirkpatrick tries to mislead and distract voters from her liberal record, the fact is she does not represent the values and priorities of Arizona families," Romero said in a written statement. "Arizonans appreciate John McCain’s independent conservative leadership, and know he’s got the experience and character to best represent our state in Washington, D.C.”

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Five of the seven most recent Arizona race polls compiled by the website FiveThirtyEight show McCain with double-digit leads. FiveThirtyEight, which makes elections forecasts, as of late Tuesday was giving McCain a 90.4 percent chance of winning re-election.

Maggie Cathey, a former Gilbert councilwoman who is supporting Kirkpatrick, said she expects that Arizona’s Republican traditions will help McCain defeat her.

“I don’t necessarily think it will be by a wide margin,” Cathey said.

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Maricopa resident Mike Galbreath is an independent voter who will cast his ballot for Kirkpatrick in the hope she would bring needed change.

“McCain’s been there too long,” Galbreath said. “He hasn’t done anything for anybody but himself for a long time as far as I can tell.”

But Tom Mellinger, a Prescott Republican supporting Trump for president, is sticking with McCain, despite McCain and Trump's notoriously stormy relations.

“He’s concerned about Congress. He’s concerned about the House and the Senate right now,” Mellinger said, referring to McCain’s recent efforts to distance himself from Trump. “That’s part of politics.”

Republic reporter Ronald J. Hansen contributed to this article.