News9/Newson6 Poll: Oklahoma U.S. Senate race mirrors the presidential race, Inhofe leads Broyles with few undecided

Longtime serving U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe has a commanding 24.5 percent lead on his lessor known Democratic challenger, Abby Broyles, and the race is charting closely with the presidential election, showing voters are either voting straight Republican or Democratic for these top two federal offices.

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Inhofe has typically led by these amounts in re-elections over the last 24 years. This race is slightly closer than his last re-election in the 2014 race against Democrat Matt Silverstein, where he led by 35 points in October.

[QUESTION] Now, thinking about the upcoming November general election for U.S. Senate, if the election were TODAY and you were standing in the voting booth right now and had to make a choice, for whom would you vote?

1. Jim Inhofe 57.3%
2. Abby Broyles 32.8
3. All other candidates 3.5
4. Undecided 6.4

Like Trump, Inhofe is getting 22 points of Democratic support and losing 5.9 points among Republicans, giving him a net 16.2 point crossover vote advantage.

Interestingly, among Independent voters, Trump is getting 20 points more of Independents in his race than Inhofe in the U.S. Senate race, and Biden is getting 10 points more of Independents in his race than Broyles.  This leaves 24.1 percent undecided in the U.S. Senate, where only 4.5 percent of Independents are undecided in the presidential race, meaning one-in-five Independents are still looking for a U.S. Senate candidate to support.

Inhofe, who is 85 years old, is polling well with young voters as well as older voters, besting Broyles 52.3 percent to 27.5 percent among voters 34 and younger, and beating her 64.9 percent to 29.7 percent among voters 65 and older. Broyles, who has attempted to make age an issue in the race, might have trouble making the case when Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, is 77 years old and, if elected president, would be older than Ronald Reagan was when he finished his term in office in 1989.

Inhofe is also polling well with women voters, beating Broyles by 21.7 points.

About the Poll

SoonerPoll.com, Oklahoma’s public opinion pollster, conducted the poll of Oklahoma likely voters for a general election.  The poll was commissioned by News9 in Oklahoma City and Newson6 in Tulsa.

The scientific study was conducted September 2-8, 2020 with 486 likely voters selected at random statewide from a tri-frame of SoonerPoll's own online panel, cell phones and landline telephones. For cell phone and landline telephones, voters are selected at random from SoonerPoll's voter database and matched with cell and landline phone numbers.  Cell phone participants are collected using live interviewers and landline participants are collected using both live interviewer and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology. The sample was weighted by political party, age, gender, and congressional district in order to reflect the Oklahoma likely voter population.

The sample was weighted by age, race, and gender. The weighting was conducted using a 'layered technique.'  The study has a Margin of Error (MoE) of ±4.45 percent.

A complete description of the methodology can be found here.  A Call Disposition and Rate Calculation Report can be found here. A beta version of the Weighting Table Report can be viewed here.

PHOTO by Gage Skidmore