Slight gains for Corbett in latest statewide Pa. poll

Gov. Corbett gained some ground but still trails his Democratic opponent by 17 percentage points among likely voters as the campaign heads into its final weeks, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll released Tuesday.

The poll shows that 55 percent of those who say they are certain to vote Nov. 4 back Democrat Tom Wolf, while 38 percent support Corbett, the Republican incumbent.

Corbett has improved his position since the last Quinnipiac survey Sept. 11, which found Wolf leading 59 percent to 35 percent - largely because the governor's support among Republicans has solidified.

Still, the question is whether there is enough time to change the dynamics of a race that the governor has trailed from the beginning.

"It's a matter of simple math and the ticking clock, and both are working against Corbett," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

In the latest survey, Republicans back Corbett by 75 to 22 percent - which the pollsters said was one of the lowest rates of same-party support for an incumbent governor in any of the nine states surveyed by Quinnipiac University.

That's an improvement over last month, when Corbett led by 66 to 28 percent among GOP voters polled.

Forty percent of the latest Quinnipiac respondents identified themselves as Democrats, and 31 percent said they were Republicans, with the remainder not affiliated with either party.

Corbett's campaign believes that the nine-point advantage for Democrats does not square with actual turnout trends in midterm elections, when GOP voters tend to go to the polls in proportionally greater numbers, said spokesman Billy Pitman.

"Tom Wolf has to be concerned with the ground he has lost in recent polls despite the millions the public-sector unions and special interests have given his campaign," Pitman said.

To conduct the poll, interviewers contacted 907 likely Pennsylvania voters by landline and cellphone between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5. Results are subject to a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.