Terry Goddard, Arizona's Democratic Attorney General, leads Republican Gov. Jan Brewer by 42 percent to 35 percent with 13 percent preferring some other candidate and 11 percent undecided, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted Sept. 24. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

This is in line with a Public Policy Polling survey conducted Sept. 18-21 that had Goddard ahead 46 percent to 36 percent.

Brewer, the former Secretary of State, became governor when President Obama chose Janet Napolitano to be Secretary of Homeland Security. But Brewer has been at war with her own party over the state's budget and that has hurt her standing.

Fifty-seven percent of voters disapprove of the way Brewer has been doing her job compared to 37 percent who give her good marks. Goddard is seen favorably by 54 percent and unfavorably by 25 percent. When it comes to the most committed – the "very favorable" – Goddard polls 16 percent and Brewer 7 percent.

The poll also tested Goddard against former Republican Gov. Fife Symington, who served from 1991 until his resignation in 1997 when he was convicted of defrauding lenders when he was a real estate developer in the 1980s. His conviction was overturned on appeal, and President Clinton pardoned him in 2001. Symington told the Arizona Republic earlier this month he might run.

Goddard leads Symington 44 percent to 37 percent with 9 percent preferring another candidate and 10 percent undecided.

Symington had beaten Goddard for governor in 1990 in a race that was so close it required a runoff.