Pete Hoekstra crashes and burns
from the Detroit Free Press:
The controversial first ad aired by the Pete Hoekstra for Senate campaign has taken its toll. A poll of 560 Michigan voters, done late last week by Public Policy Polling, shows Hoekstra falling further behind incumbent U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Shes beating Hoekstra by a 51%-37% margin and Clark Durant, a Grosse Pointe Republican, by a 50-33% margin.
The North Carolina-based polling firm asked people surveyed if they were familiar with Hoekstras ad, which started airing on Super Bowl Sunday and featured an Asian woman riding a bike alongside a rice paddy and speaking broken English. Of those polled, 54% were familiar with the ad and 45% of those people said it made them less likely to vote for Hoekstra; 15% said the ad would make them more likely to vote for Hoekstra while 37% said it wouldnt make a difference.
Hoekstra has since replaced the ad with another one highlighting Stabenows spending without any Asian images and scrubbed the first commercial from his website.
Hoekstras campaign questioned the credibility of the poll because it was weighted based on 2008 election results. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.freep.com/article/20120214/NEWS15/120214049/Hoekstra-s-Super-Bowl-ad-drags-his-poll-numbers-down?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE