mccainThe poll, by Rasmussen, puts Hayworth at 42 and McCain at 47, with a four percent margin of error. McCain has been leading in every poll taken thus far; it seems more likely that the error would be in McCain’s favor.

Here are the poll’s favorable/unfavorable rankings of Tweedlecreep, Tweedlebuffoon and Rodney Glassman, the likely Democratic opponent in November:

Favorable / Unfavorable

John McCain: 52 / 46

Rodney Glassman: 32 / 34

J.D. Hayworth: 43 / 49

Those are apparently the findings for likely voters; note that on the Pollster.com page for the poll, a commenter named “jmartin4s” says:

I looked at the internals of the primary poll and I think the McCain/Hayworth primary could go either way. According to the poll Hayworth has a 58% favorability among R primary voters and McCain has 57%. [This makes sense, given that all voters would have a higher favorable impression of McCain than Hayworth.] In addition, Hayworth represented a part of Maricopa county for a while and has gotten the endorsement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The fact that McCain an a four-term incumbent is ahead of Hayworth by only 5 is amazing. In addition, the primary is in September [actually, it’s Aug. 25] so there is a huge amount of time for McCain to continue to bleed votes to Hayworth.

Emphases added.

Talking Point Memo’s piece on the poll contains this comment from one “david46”:

A couple of months ago, I had a long conversation with a long time Arizona Democratic political operative about what was gooing on in AZ. He said that McCain was in trouble and do not pay any attention to the disorganized and chaotic Hayworth campaign. The Hensley family (i.e., Cindy McCain) no longer had the dominent position it once had in the AZ Republican Party.

The party organization hates McCain and was looking to take him out because he was a liberal in their thinking and that he would not take care of their financial interests. (McCain was burned badly in the S&L scandals and pretty much stopped looking after individual, parachial financial interests and AZ is a state with heavy Federal involvement in its economy.) He said that the several very wealthy folks who control the AZ party wanted to get rid of McCain and replace him with someone who would do their bidding. They were prepared to let the seat go Democratic in the event the buffoon Hayworth lost in a general election because they would be able to talk to a Democrat about parochial AZ interests which they cannot with McCain and then hope to put in a Republican in six years.

Terry Goddard at this point looks good to win the Governor’s seat, but he does have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Hispanic vote continues to grow. The problem is that there is not a first tier Democratic candidate for the Senate seat because Democrats such as Gifford thought it was too much of a long shot that Hayworth would defeat McCain—and they were probably correct. That said, the Dems do have respectable folks in the race and if Hayworth does win, then expect resources to pour into AZ.

The latest fundraising news

Mike Dan Nowicki in the Arizona Republic has this, which suggests that Hayworth isn’t going to have it easy:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his primary challenger J.D. Hayworth released their final fundraising numbers for the first three months of 2010. Hayworth, a former congressman who officially entered the race on Feb. 15, reported raising an impressive $1.07 million, though he only has $681,478 left on hand. McCain, however, collected $2.3 million and still has $4.6 million ready to spend.

(Apologies to Dan Nowicki for getting his name wrong originally in this post.)