Democrats Seeking Nomination for Pennsylvania Governor Suffer 'Invisibility'

The Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary is coming up on May 18 and while the Republicans have a clear front-runner in state Attorney General Tom Corbett, that's not the case on the Democratic side where the candidates "have been virtually invisible to the voters," according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted March 31 - April 5.

Corbett won the endorsement of the Republican State Committee last February and is being challenged by state Rep. Sam Rohrer, who held a counterconvention the same day at which he courted members of the Tea Party movement. Corbett outpolls Rohrer by 58 percent to 7 percent, with 35 percent undecided.

On the Democratic side, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato is in the lead with 20 percent, followed by former Rep. Joe Hoeffel at 15 percent, Auditor General Jack Wagner at 13 percent and state Sen. Anthony Williams at 5 percent. The margin of error is 3.2 points.

But a big number is the 47 percent who are still undecided. And even bigger numbers are the percentages of voters who do not know enough about the Democratic candidates to express a favorable or unfavorably opinion of them: that number is 64 percent for Onorato, 73 percent for Wagner, 75 percent for Hoeffel and 92 percent for Williams.

"With the candidates so unknown and just under half the voters undecided almost anything can happen, although history tells us in situations like this one, the winner will be the candidate with the largest and most effective television ad campaign and ground operation to bring out their vote," said Quinnipiac's Peter Brown. "With that level of anonymity, anything is possible. This is clearly a race that is yet to be decided."

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