Poll: R.l. Gov. Gina Raimondo widens lead over GOP challenger Allan Fung

Democrat Raimondo now leads Fung, the mayor of Cranston, 43 percent to 36 percent. And that 7-point lead seems linked to the independent candidacy of former Republican state lawmaker Joseph Trillo, who scored 6.7 percent of the potential vote that might otherwise have gone to Fung.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Fresh out of a decisive Democratic primary win, Gov. Gina Raimondo has widened her lead over Republican challenger Allan Fung, according to a newly released WPRI-TV poll.

With the number of undecided voters shrinking, Democrat Raimondo now leads Fung, the mayor of Cranston, 43 percent to 36 percent. In July, they were within 2 points of each other.

But the telephone survey that veteran Rhode Island pollster Joseph Fleming conducted for WPRI and Roger Williams University also strongly indicates that Raimondo’s 7-point lead is not Fung’s biggest problem at this stage of the 2018 campaign.

Fung’s biggest obstacle right now appears to be former Republican state lawmaker — and President Donald Trump’s 2016 Rhode Island campaign chairman — Joseph Trillo, running for governor as an independent.

Trillo scored 6.7 percent of the potential vote that might otherwise have found its way to Fung, who trails Raimondo by 6.9 percentage points, according to the poll.

The other candidates on the gubernatorial ballot barely registered on the political Richter scale, including Moderate Party candidate William Gilbert (1.7 percent), independent Luis-Daniel Munoz (0.5 percent) and Compassion Party candidate Anne Armstrong (1.4 percent).

In another closely watched race, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse led his challenger, former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Robert Flanders, 54 percent to 35 percent, according to the poll results aired for the first time at 5 p.m. on WPRI.

The post-primary survey of 400 likely Rhode Island voters was conducted between Friday, Sept. 14, and Monday, Sept. 17. The margin of error: plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

Fleming’s takeaways: Raimondo got a bounce from her double-digit primary win over former Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown, running to her left, and the $1.7 million-plus she spent on TV ads to get her message out, during a period when the Fung campaign did little advertising. In July, Fleming also noted: Raimondo had a 10-point lead over Fung among female voters. That has grown to a 20-point lead.

Another observation: Fung has a potential Trump problem. “The Raimondo campaign has already started trying to tie Allan Fung to Donald Trump. The thing is: if Allan Fung distances himself too much from Donald Trump, those voters — if they get upset — they have a place to go, and that’s Joe Trillo, because he was the Trump campaign chairman in Rhode Island.”

For Raimondo and Fung, the race is a rematch between two candidates who faced each other in 2014. Then-General Treasurer Raimondo beat Fung in that race with 40.7 percent of the vote to his 36.2 percent and the late Robert J. Healey’s 21.4 percent as the Moderate Party candidate that year. Looked at in that context, Fung’s numbers have not moved.

Since the last Fleming poll in July, Raimondo appears to have gained some traction. Her potential share of the vote grew from 39 percent to 43 percent while Fung’s numbers barely moved from 36.6 percent down to 36.2 percent. Trillo’s potential share of the vote inched up to 7 percent, while the number of voters describing themselves as undecided in the race for governor shrank to 9.3 percent.

All three of the better-known candidates are competing for the “independent” vote in a state where unaffiliated voters (378,669) outnumber registered Republicans (92,021) and registered Democrats (307,963). Registered Moderate Party voters (3,307) make up a tiny slice of the electorate. According to the poll, Raimondo and Fung are currently running even among independent voters, with about 38 percent each from that pool.

Trillo captured about 10.5 percent of Republicans and 8.5 percent of independents.

The poll also provided a different measure of how the candidates are viewed, with more people (16.4 percent) giving Trump credit for doing an “excellent job” than Raimondo (14.3 percent). Trump was given a good-to-excellent rating by 31 percent.

But when all the numbers are added up, 38.1 percent of those polled rated Raimondo’s job performance as “excellent” or “good,” while 60 percent rated it as “fair” to “poor.” Those surveyed were not asked about Fung’s job performance as mayor of the state’s second-largest city, but they were asked if they had a favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of Raimondo and Fung and Trillo.

The result: about 50 percent view Fung and Raimondo favorably; 21 percent view Trillo that way. As for those who have an “unfavorable″ or “somewhat unfavorable” opinion, the numbers go like this: Fung, 35 percent; Trillo, 36 percent; Raimondo, 47 percent.

Raimondo campaign spokesman Michael Raia issued this statement on the poll results: “There’s a lot at risk for Rhode Islanders in this election. Governor Raimondo is bringing real change and strong leadership to Rhode Island, after too many years in which our leaders failed us and Rhode Islanders fell behind.

“There are more jobs right now than at nearly any other time in state history, and unemployment is the lowest it’s been in close to 20 years. Allan Fung opposes the policies that are finally changing things for the better in our state, and he’ll never stand up to President Trump. He can’t be trusted to lead our state.”

The Fung campaign had this response from spokesman Andrew Augustus: “The Governor has spent over 5 million dollars and her numbers remain absolutely abysmal for a Democrat incumbent Governor in a deep blue state. The majority of Rhode Islanders are clearly saying that they want change and that they do not want Gina Raimondo.

“Allan Fung is the only candidate that can beat her and bring that change, and a vote for anyone else only gets you four more years of the same incompetent governor.”

Trillo questioned the timing of the poll.

“How can Joe Fleming put out a poll so soon after the primary? It is irresponsible to go out into the field mere days after the primary election, when some voters are not yet focused on the governor’s race,” Trillo said in a statement. “Any pollster would know that this skews the results.

“What people need to start focusing on, instead of a poll, is who is going to start turning this state around. That candidate is me, the true independent, beholden to no one.”