Fourth District GOP Voters Share Opinions On Ross, Romney And Razorbacks

As a follow up to our Fourth Congressional District GOP primary poll, which showed Tom Cotton and Beth Anne Rankin tied for support at 38%, Talk Business and Hendrix College quizzed Republican voters on four additional issues.

Those issues included Democratic Cong. Mike Ross’ job performance, support for the Warren Buffett Rule, the field of GOP Presidential candidates who will appear on the Arkansas ballot, and the recent decision to fire Razorback football coach Bobby Petrino.

The latest Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll, conducted on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, asked questions of 542 likely Republican primary voters in Arkansas’ Fourth Congressional District, which encompasses all or part of 33 counties. You can access the full poll results here.

CONG. MIKE ROSS
Cong. Mike Ross, D-Prescott, who has strayed frequently from party line votes, has a healthy dose of respect from Republican voters, according to the poll.  More than one-third give him positive marks for his job performance.

Q: Cong. Mike Ross is retiring from the Fourth District Congressional seat after more than 10 years in office.  Do you approve or disapprove of the job Cong. Ross is doing in Congress?

34%     Approve
41%     Disapprove
25%     Don’t know

GOP PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY
While front-runner Mitt Romney has a clear path to the GOP Presidential nomination, four candidates will be on the May 22 ballot for Republican voters. How do those voters feel about Romney as their candidate and the other qualifiers for the ballot?

Q: Four Republican Presidential candidates have qualified to be on the ballot in the May 22 primary: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.  If the election were today, for whom would you vote?

15%        Newt Gingrich
6%          Ron Paul
46.5%     Mitt Romney
24%        Rick Santorum
8.5%       Don’t know

Romney received 56.5% of the vote versus 33% for Pres. Barack Obama in a survey of general election voters conducted by Talk Business and Hendrix College in late March.

WARREN BUFFETT RULE
Obama and Senate Democrats recently pushed for action on a bill that would codify the “Buffett Rule,” a proposal to raise the income tax on those who make more than $1 million annually. The effort has been promoted by billionaire investor Warren Buffett. By a 3-to-1 margin, Fourth District Republican voters opposed the plan.

Q6. The U.S. Senate recently sought to consider a bill called “The Warren Buffett Rule,” which would place a higher income tax on those making more than $1 million a year. Would you support the Buffett Rule becoming law?

23%    Yes
66%    No
11%    Don’t know

Per capita income in Arkansas in 2011 was $34,104, according to statistics released last month.

BOBBY PETRINO FIRING
Of course, a raging topic of debate in Arkansas for the last two weeks centered on developments that led to the firing of Razorback head football coach, Bobby Petrino. In the Fourth Congressional District, GOP voters overwhelmingly supported the university’s decision to terminate Petrino.

Q7. The University of Arkansas recently fired head football coach Bobby Petrino. Do you agree with the decision to fire Petrino?

84%    Yes
6%      No
10%    Don’t know

Dr. Jay Barth, with the Hendrix College Department of Politics and International Relations, helped craft and analyze the poll. Barth noted:

• For a Democrat, Mike Ross maintains quite strong numbers among Republicans in the district. It suggests that he would have been strongly situated to maintain his seat in Congress. It also suggests that whomever emerges as the Republican nominee will not be able to run against Ross but will, instead, run against “Washington Democrats.”
• It appears that former Governor Romney is on his way to an easy win in the May 22 presidential primary in the state with the departure of Rick Santorum from the race.
• Despite the relative poverty of the district, the Buffet Rule is deeply unpopular among Republican voters in the Fourth.
• While we cannot be sure that the finding is generalizable to all Arkansans, there is evidence that those Arkansans living in the southern part of the state and the River Valley region approve overwhelmingly of the decision to fire Coach Bobby Petrino.

POLL METHODOLOGY
The poll was conducted by Talk Business Research and Hendrix College on Tuesday, April 17, 2012. The poll, which has a margin of error of +/-4.2%, was completed using IVR survey technology among 542 likely Republican voters in Arkansas’ Fourth Congressional District.

Participants were selected from a database of district voters who have voted in some or all of the last 5 Republican primary elections and who affirmatively answered a question that they intended to vote in the GOP primary on May 22, 2012.

All media outlets are welcome to reprint, reproduce, or rebroadcast information from this poll with proper attribution to Talk Business and Hendrix College.

For interviews, Brock can be reached by email at [email protected]. Barth can be contacted at [email protected].