New Poll: Toomey-McGinty Race Is Essentially Tied

Also, 57 percent of Pennsylvanians support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

Katie McGinty, Pat Toomey

Katie McGinty photo by Donald Derosa, used under a Creative Commons license

A new poll from Quinnipiac University says that the Senate race in Pennsylvania is very much like the presidential one here: A dead heat.

Sen. Pat Toomey gets 45 percent of the vote in the new poll, while Katie McGinty gets 44 percent. Much like the poll Quinnipiac took of Trump/Clinton, men back the Republican candidate (53–36 percent), while women say they’re going to vote for McGinty (51-38). The pollsters interviewed 1,077 Pennsylvania voters and say the poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

It is a long time before the election, and a lot could change. So let’s focus in on what is perhaps the more interesting result from this poll: 57 percent of Pennsylvanians support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Thirty-nine percent oppose; the only groups against this change are Republicans and voters over 65 years old.

“The most liberal of the three big swing states on the issue, Pennsylvanians give a big thumbs up to small amounts of marijuana in the hands of adults,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, says in a release.

Meanwhile, Pa. voters also support the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court by a 52 percent to 29 percent margin. Thirty percent of voters told Quinnipiac that Toomey’s belief the next president should nominate a Supreme Court justice make them less likely to vote for him.

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