Fox poll a mixed bag for Senate Dems

A slate of new Fox News polls have bad news for Democrats in two key Senate battleground states but offer a more optimistic outlook for the party in North Carolina and Kansas.

{mosads}Fox finds Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) heading to a runoff with Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and trailing him by 13 points in it.

In the fall four-way matchup, Landrieu takes 31 percent support among likely voters, Cassidy takes 35 percent, and Tea Party-backed Rob Maness takes 7 percent, while libertarian Brannon McMorris gets 2 percent support.

In Louisiana, if no candidate tops 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters face off in a runoff. Every recent poll of the race has suggested such a scenario is likely, and the new Fox poll shows the runoff would be a blowout, giving Cassidy 51 percent to Landrieu’s 38 percent support.

Still, 26 percent of likely Louisiana voters say they could change their minds, and a bigger portion of Landrieu’s supporters say they’re certain to back her over Cassidy.

In Fox’s Iowa Senate poll, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley is tied with Republican Joni Ernst, each taking 41 percent support, with 19 percent undecided.

It’s the second survey out this month to show the race — which Democrats had hoped would be a relatively easy one — is a dead heat.

But there’s a bright spot for the party in North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) leads her GOP challenger, North Carolina Speaker Thom Tillis, by 5 points. Hagan takes 41 percent support among likely voters to Tillis’s 36 percent support, while 6 percent support libertarian Sean Haugh.

And in Kansas, Fox finds Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) vulnerable, taking 40 percent support to independent Greg Orman’s 38 percent support. Eleven percent support Democrat Chad Taylor, while another 2 percent back libertarian Randall Batson.

But with Taylor and Batson out of the race, Orman surges ahead of Roberts, taking 48 percent to Roberts’s 42 percent support.

That aligns with other recent polling of the race, and is why Taylor attempted two weeks ago to take his name off the ballot. His request to be removed from the race was denied by the Kansas secretary of State, however, and Taylor ultimately took it to the state’s Supreme Court, which heard arguments from both sides on Tuesday and is expected to decide this week whether he’ll remain in the race.

But Roberts’s vulnerability isn’t yet reason for Democrats to rejoice. Orman has said he’ll caucus with whichever party is in the majority, but hasn’t indicated which he’d choose if Kansas is the deciding seat in control of the Senate.

If the numbers in Iowa and Louisiana hold, Democrats are facing the very real prospect of losing control of the Senate — and subsequently, of a Roberts defeat being a moot point for the party.

The Fox News poll was conducted by Democratic pollster Anderson Robbins Research and Republican pollster Shaw & Company Research from Sept. 14-16, through live interviews via landline and cellphone in each of the states. In Louisiana, 617 likely voters were surveyed; in Iowa, 600 likely voters were surveyed; in North Carolina, 605 likely voters were surveyed; in Kansas, 604 likely voters were surveyed. All four of the polls had a 4-point margin of error.