Entering his first re-election campaign, Rep. Rob Bishop appears to have retained the practically insurmountable support enjoyed by Jim Hansen, his 1st Congressional District predecessor.
According to a Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates last week, Bishop is resting on a 35 percent cushion, with 57 percent of respondents supporting the incumbent and only 22 percent supporting Democratic challenger Steve Thompson. The poll has a 5.5 percent margin of error and surveyed 307 residents of the northern Utah district.
Those numbers, while encouraging, will not sway Bishop's campaign plans or his congressional activities. He also said that they would not discourage him from accepting debates with Thompson, if dates could be found that worked with his Utah schedule.
"Any poll number is a snapshot in time, and I expect those numbers to change," he said. "I don't take them to be a foregone conclusion, and we will be campaigning as hard as possible."
Thompson has actually more than doubled the 10 percent support he had in a March poll. Bishop, on the other hand, only rose by one percentage point.
Following his return from the Cannes Film Festival, Thompson said he plans to focus on fund-raising so he candeliver his message to voters. Because of his "fiscally conservative policies," he felt confident that he will be able to bring more supporters into his stable.
With his only elected experience as a Logan city councilman, "I'm relatively unknown outside of the Cache Valley," he said. "I need to introduce myself to voters."
The most surprising aspect of the poll numbers may actually be the support Bishop receives from his opponent's party. Of the people who identified themselves as Democrats, 17 percent of them planned to vote for Bishop, as did 30 percent of the people who voted as a "not so strong Democrat" in past years.
E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com