New polling shared with Alabama Daily News shows Charlotte Meadows with a strong lead in the special election for Montgomery-based House District 74.
In a survey conducted by Remington Research Group last week, Meadows leads the Republican field with 39 percent of voters choosing her on a ballot test question. Opponents Michael Fritz got 10 percent, Jay King got five percent, Daniel Sparkman got four percent, Tobias Grant got three percent, and Jesse Caleb Heifner got two percent. Thirty seven percent of the vote was undecided, according to the survey.
“You will not find a more hard working candidate than Charlotte Meadows; the campaign has already knocked on over 4,500 doors,” said campaign adviser Scott Stone.
“We wish Election Day was tomorrow.”
The House District 74 special primary election is June 11. The primary runoff, if needed, will be held Aug. 27 with a general election to follow on Nov. 12. The general election would be moved up to Aug. 27 if a runoff is not necessary or if a primary is not necessary.
The seat was previously held by Republican Rep. Dimitri Polizos who died in March after a suffering a heart attack.
Meadows benefits from a large name recognition advantage, most likely deriving from her previous run for the seat in 2014. Fifty three percent of voters had a favorable opinion of Meadows and 16 percent had an unfavorable opinion, while just 31 percent had no opinion. By contrast, the lowest “no opinion” total among the other candidates was 76 percent for Fritz, indicating they are not as well known by voters.
The survey also showed GOP voters in the district have a favorable opinion of President Donald Trump (75 percent favorable, 15 percent unfavorable), support charter schools (56 percent support, 17 percent oppose), and believe Alabama is headed in the right direction (61 percent “right direction,” 29 percent “wrong track”).
The survey was conducted May 20-22 with 403 likely Republican special election primary voters with a margin of error of 4.7 percent. Remington Research Group did polling on behalf of House Republicans for several of the races in the 2018 general election.