Pollster: ‘Liz Cheney Is Going to Get Beat’ in Wyoming Primary Race

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 19: U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair of the select committ
Natalie Behring/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images
Wendell Husebø

Brad Coker, managing director of the polling firm Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, stated Friday that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) will lose the August 16 primary against former President Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Harriet Hageman.

“The big story is Liz Cheney is going to get beat,” Coker reflected on a primary poll released Friday. “That’s a foregone conclusion.”

Friday’s Casper Star-Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll revealed Hageman leads Cheney by 22 points (52 to 30 percent). Eleven percent are undecided. According to previous polling, Hageman is leading in the polls by 28 and 30 points.

“This race is more about Liz Cheney than it is about Donald Trump,” Coker continued. “Anybody who’s credible, who ran to the right of Liz Cheney would probably win this race – with or without Donald Trump.”

Cheney, whose approval rating was found to be 27 percent among Wyoming voters, has participated in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) partisan January 6 Committee. “[T]he poll found 54% of voters were less likely to support her because she’s part of the panel investigating the attack on the Capitol.”

CHEYENNE, WY - JANUARY 28: A man holds up a sign against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) speaks to a crowd during a rally against her on January 28, 2021 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Gaetz added his voice to a growing effort to vote Cheney out of office after she voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

“Once a politician gets to a certain point, there’s a point of no return,” Coker added.

Voters have been unhappy with Cheney’s involvement in the partisan committee. Former Cheney donor, Nancy Donovan, who has given more than $35,000 to Cheney’s past campaigns, is now questioning Cheney’s mental state.

“I sit there watching the January 6 hearings and I think: ‘Have you lost your mind?’” she told the Financial Times. “This man [Trump] has every major institution going after him, from the media to the swamp in Washington, DC, and now to have one of his own party do the same thing?”

Throughout the primary campaign, Cheney has mostly remained in Washington, DC, while Hageman has focused on traveling the Cowboy State.

“She doesn’t live here, for starters. She doesn’t really represent us,” voter Sally O’Brien told Yahoo News of Cheney. “She says she’s a constitutionalist, but she doesn’t believe in justice for all, only for the Jan. 6 people.”

“Liz Cheney betrayed President Trump,” Mark Hladik, who has lived in Wyoming for 42 years, told the Tribune. “Ninety-nine point nine percent pure RINO.”

Hageman has pointed to Cheney’s participation in the partisan committee in D.C. as an act of betrayal. Cheney “does not represent us and she has betrayed us,” she told the Times:

[Cheney] spends her time on the January 6 committee. She has stated very, very, very clearly that her priority is to block Donald Trump from ever being elected… People care about inflation and about the open border and about protection of our jobs and protection of our schools and protection of our kids. That’s not what she cares about right now.

The Wyoming Republican Party and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have renounced Cheney. After the Wyoming GOP voted in November to no longer recognize her as a Republican,  McCarthy announced in February his endorsement of Hageman to defeat Cheney, a rare move for a minority leader.

The Mason-Dixon poll sampled 1,100 Wyoming voters from July 7-11 with a 3-point margin of error.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.

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