(Updated to add complete polls results)
Democrat Laura Kelly and Republican Kris Kobach are still running neck and neck in the Kansas governor’s race, while independent Greg Orman isn’t gaining ground.
New internal Democratic polling shows Kobach with 39 percent compared to Kelly at 38 percent, well within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Orman was at 9 percent, the poll showed. Independent Rick Kloos was at 2 percent, and Libertarian Jeff Caldwell was at 1 percent. Eleven percent of voters were undecided.
The survey by Public Policy Polling is very similar to one done a couple weeks ago by the Kansas National Education Association.
The KNEA poll of 877 likely voters was done Aug. 24 through Aug. 26. Kelly and Kobach were the front runners in that poll, while Orman trailed the leaders.
The KNEA poll showed Orman at 9 percent, which is where he still was in the latest Democratic poll.
The Orman campaign criticized the KNEA poll as biased and similarly denounced the Democratic poll as irrelevant.
“Democrat partisan polls that are leaked to the press, always have an agenda to them; they are meaningless and cannot be viewed as reality,” said Orman campaign spokesman Nicholas Connors.
The Kelly campaign used the poll to show that the Kansas governor’s race is a two-person campaign as the general election approaches.
“This poll confirms what we’ve seen time and time again – this is clearly a race between Laura Kelly and Kris Kobach, with Greg Orman in a very distant third,” said Kelly spokeswoman Johanna Warshaw.
“With the broad support Laura Kelly has from Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, we are confident she will win in November.”
The Kobach campaign was not immediately available for comment Thursday.
The latest poll of 618 likely Kansas voters was done this week on Tuesday and Wednesday, after the first two gubernatorial debates.
It showed Kobach and Kelly were about even in their favorable ratings. Kobach was at 36 percent favorability, while Kelly was at 35 percent. Orman was at 24 percent.
However, Kobach’s unfavorable rating was 27 percentage points higher than Kelly’s, 47 percent to 20 percent. Orman was at 32 percent.
In the latest poll, voters who supported President Donald Trump two years ago were lining up behind Kobach, who was endorsed by the president in the primary.
About 65 percent of those polled who voted for Trump in 2016 said they supported Kobach. Almost 80 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 were backing Kelly in the Kansas governor’s race.
Orman, meanwhile, received support in the poll from 10 percent who said they voted for Trump and 7 percent who backed Clinton.
At a recent meeting in Overland Park, Kelly was asked if she was concerned about Trump’s role in the Kansas governor’s race.
The senator pointed out that Trump’s own polling numbers are dropping. Kelly said she didn’t think the president’s support for Kobach would influence the outcome of the race.
She said Trump supporters are already behind Kobach, and the president’s opponents won’t be swayed by his endorsement of the GOP nominee.
“I don’t think that moves the needle,” Kelly said of Trump.
