FARGO (AP) - North Dakota's candidates for insurance commissioner will be competing for undecided voters in the campaign's final weeks.

In a poll commissioned by The Forum newspaper, 43 percent of the people surveyed said they haven't made up their minds whether to vote for Republican Adam Hamm or Democrat Jasper Schneider.

In other poll results, Gov. John Hoeven and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., hold large leads over their challengers.

Thirty-four percent of the people surveyed are backing Hamm, while 22 percent are favoring Schneider.

Both men are running their first statewide campaigns. Hamm was appointed as North Dakota's insurance commissioner last year after incumbent Republican Jim Poolman resigned.

Schneider is a Fargo attorney and first-term state representative.

n In the U.S. House race, Pomeroy is likely to beat Republican challenger Duane Sand for the second time next month.

The survey says 60 percent of the people polled are backing Pomeroy. The Democrat is running for his ninth term in the U.S. House.

Twenty-eight percent of the poll's respondents are supporting Sand, and 12 percent were undecided.

Four years ago, Pomeroy beat Sand with 60 percent of the vote. In 2000, Sand lost to Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad. Conrad got 61 percent of the vote.

n Hoeven appears to have an easy path to an unprecedented third four-year term as the state's chief executive.

Seventy-three percent of the people who responded to the poll said they favor the Republican governor in his race against Democratic challenger Tim Mathern.

Mathern is a state senator from Fargo who is making his first statewide race. Eighteen percent of the poll's respondents said they were supporting Mathern. Nine percent were undecided.

The voters who were surveyed said that economic development, jobs and rising health care costs were their top concerns in the election campaign.

Hoeven got 71 percent of the vote when he won his second term in 2004. Since the term of North Dakota's governor was lengthened from two to four years in 1964, no governor has won three terms in office.

The polls were commissioned by The Forum newspaper, and done by the Public Affairs Institute of Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Pollsters interviewed 606 likely North Dakota voters by telephone Oct. 6-8. The poll has a 4 percent sampling error margin.