Heitkamp up Five in New Poll, DSCC Launching Ad

By Steven Shepard and Julie Sobel  //  April 27, 2012 | 4:12 p.m.

The seat of retiring North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad is viewed as one of the best Republican pick-up opportunities on the Senate landscape this cycle, but Democrats have long contended that their prospects of holding onto the seat in November are better than most observers believe. To further that point, they released a new poll Friday conducted for the Peace Garden State's Democratic Party showing GOP at-large Rep. Rick Berg trailing Democrat Heidi Heitkamp by a small margin, results that were similar to a poll last November commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has purchased about $76,000 in airtime in North Dakota, matching a Crossroads GPS buy from this week. The DSCC ad is slated to run in markets across the state from April 25 to May 4.

In the new poll, conducted by St. Paul, Minn.-based DFM Research, Heitkamp leads Berg, 49 percent to 44 percent. Seven percent of likely voters are undecided or preferred another candidate.

Last November, the DSCC touted a Mellman Group survey it commissioned that showed Heitkamp leading Berg by the same, five-point margin, 47 percent to 42 percent.

Berg has been consistently trying to tie Heitkamp to President Obama. He got some help from the Crossroads GPS ad: The spot quoted Heitkamp in 2008 saying, "I think Barack Obama's going to be amazing and I think we are on our way to a better United States," and the ad's narrator says Heitkamp "supports Obamacare." Indeed, Obama lost North Dakota by nine points in 2008, and he is in significantly worse shape in the state this year. The DFM Research poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 19 percentage points ahead of Obama, 51 percent to 32 percent. Successfully tying Heitkamp to the national Democratic Party could also have a positive effect for Berg: Just 34 percent of likely voters have a favorable opinion of the party, compared to 52 percent who view the GOP favorably. The poll was conducted April 18-26, surveying 478 likely voters. The margin of error is plus-or-minus 4.5 percentage points.

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