Poll: Stenberg gaining on Bruning in Nebraska’s GOP Senate primary

Nebraska state Treasurer Don Stenberg is gaining ground on state Attorney General Jon Bruning in the Republican primary for Nebraska’s open Senate seat, a new poll by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) showed.

DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund has endorsed the Tea Party-backed Stenberg and commissioned the poll, which put Bruning at 32 percent and Stenberg at 26 percent. Previous polls in the race had Bruning up more than 20 points on Stenberg.

“Voters are starting to focus on this race and are concluding that Don Stenberg is the genuine conservative who they trust to send to Washington and tackle runaway spending and get our economy back on track,“ said Stenberg, referring to himself in the third person.

Democrats have yet to recruit a viable candidate and are facing an uphill battle to hold on to the seat after Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced in December that he would not seek reelection.

Stenberg has struggled to raise funds for his campaign independently, but has gotten a big boost from DeMint’s efforts on his behalf.

Bruning's campaign sent an email to supporters Thursday calling it a "bogus poll" and suggesting that the pollster had pushed negative information about Bruning before asking respondents who they would support. But DeMint's team stood behind the accuracy of the poll and said respondent's weren't told any negative information about Bruning before being asked to state which candidate they supported.

The poll by GOP firm Basswood Research was conducted Jan. 23-24 and included 500 Republican voters in Nebraska. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

- This post was updated at 2:41 p.m