The Oklahoma pollster says candidates and campaigns still matter in Republican primaries.
Political observers often view Oklahoma Republican contests as a struggle between the party’s governing wing and its activist wing.
Tuesday’s runoff results did not fit neatly into either camp.
Republicans narrowly nominated Mike Mazzei for governor after a campaign that made President Donald Trump’s endorsement a central part of its closing message. On the same ballot, they decisively chose Robert Franklin over James Taylor for state superintendent despite the Oklahoma Republican Party’s endorsement of Taylor.
Pollster Pat McFerron said the mixed result offers a reminder that Republican runoff voters do not always follow the factional lines used to explain political battles at the state Capitol.
“At the end of the day, the quality of the individual candidate matters,” McFerron said in an interview with OK Politics Today. “There aren’t those defined teams within the Republican primary election. The quality of the individual candidate, the quality of the individual campaign still matters.”
Where Mazzei found the votes
Mazzei’s victory over Attorney General Gentner Drummond came by just over 2,000 of the more than 371,000 votes cast.
Mazzei finished behind Drummond by more than 1,100 votes in the June primary. Moving from that deficit to a runoff victory required a shift of almost 3,200 votes in the margin between them.
McFerron said two things stand out in the county results: Drummond did not build a large enough advantage in metropolitan Oklahoma, and Mazzei made substantial gains in rural eastern counties.
Official results show notable movement toward Mazzei in McCurtain, Sequoyah, Le Flore and Adair counties.
“When you lose twice as much ground in a small county like McCurtain than you pick up in Oklahoma County, that’s really the challenge,” McFerron said.
Drummond improved his position in Oklahoma County and made larger gains in Tulsa and Rogers counties. But McFerron said he needed a stronger metropolitan performance to offset Mazzei’s gains elsewhere.
The result also challenged the conventional expectation that heavier turnout would favor Drummond.
McFerron said his polling found Drummond performed best among habitual Republican primary voters who knew when the runoff would be held. Mazzei was stronger among Republicans who had participated in fewer primary elections.
He believes Mazzei’s closing campaign helped bring more of those voters to the polls. Trump held a telephone rally for Mazzei on the eve of the election, and U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin endorsed him during the closing days.
“The Mazzei campaign had a really good campaign the last 72 hours,” McFerron said. That effort, he said, reached voters who wanted to support Trump and Mazzei but may not have been closely following the runoff.
The Walters factor
The superintendent’s race produced a much different result.
Franklin defeated Taylor by more than 33,000 votes, winning about 55% of the Republican vote. McFerron said Franklin entered the race with an organizational advantage among people connected to Oklahoma’s public schools.
He also believes former State Superintendent Ryan Walters shaped how voters evaluated Taylor.
McFerron said Walters’ chaotic tenure may have changed the burden of proof for a candidate perceived as potentially similar to him. Voters did not necessarily have to conclude that Taylor would govern like Walters, he said. Concern that he might was enough to create resistance.
“It’s almost a presumption of guilt instead of a presumption of innocence when it comes to alignment,” McFerron said.
At least some Republicans who voted for Mazzei also supported Franklin, a combination that cuts across the factional labels commonly applied to the two campaigns. Those choices support McFerron’s argument that voters made separate judgments about the candidates and campaigns in each race.
What the endorsements meant
Three days before the runoff, the Oklahoma Republican Party State Committee endorsed Mazzei, Taylor and Kevin West, who was running for labor commissioner.
Mazzei and West won. Taylor lost decisively.
McFerron did not put all endorsements in the same category. He believes Trump’s election-eve call and Mullin’s support helped Mazzei reach less-frequent primary voters.
The state party endorsement, by contrast, was more likely to reinforce a choice voters had already made in the governor’s race.
“If you were already voting for Mazzei, you thought it was a great deal,” McFerron said. “If you were voting for Drummond, you probably thought it was shenanigans.”
Candidate endorsements generally rank low among the reasons voters give for supporting someone in a well-defined race, he said. Their importance grows when voters know less about the candidates.
“If there’s no other information, that rises to the top,” McFerron said.
That means a state party endorsement may carry greater weight in a lower-profile down-ballot contest than in a governor’s race that has already consumed millions of dollars in advertising and months of news coverage.
The jerseys return in November
“In primaries, it’s not about whose jersey you are wearing,” McFerron said. “Now, November, it’s about whose party you are, which team you’re on.”
He said a general election between Drummond and Democrat Cyndi Munson would have emphasized many of the same partisan differences as the campaign between Mazzei and Munson.
“I don’t think the outcome’s any different between the two candidates in the general election,” McFerron said.
He expects the race to appear more competitive during its opening weeks as Munson makes her case against Mazzei. Ultimately, however, he expects it to move closer to the state’s Republican lean.
That assessment is consistent with McFerron’s pre-runoff survey, which gave Republicans a 20-point advantage on the generic legislative ballot.
That, McFerron said, is the essential difference between a Republican primary and the general election. Candidates and campaigns can disrupt the party’s internal coalitions in August. By November, the party label usually pulls them back together.
