Bob Barr, the third party Libertarian Candidate for President (and former Georgia congressman) has predicted Obama will win Georgia and its 15 electoral votes.
Senator John McCain will not win Georgia. His shrinking poll numbers are an indication that McCain is losing touch with the American public as we get closer to November 4th.
This comes as devastating news to the McCain campaign as polls taken a month ago showed McCain with a 54 - 43 lead in the traditionally Red State.
"Sen. McCain never connected with the fiscal conservatives in Georgia," says Barr. "His lack of a principled stand on issues such as reducing the size of government and cutting spending bothers Georgia voters. Sen. McCain can't say with a straight face he will not raise taxes or increase government spending, given his support for such extremely expensive federal government programs like the recent massive bailouts for Wall Street. Clearly, McCain has failed to attract the hearts and support of Georgia voters."
I personally consider the Republican party to be an alliance of three voting blocks. Block 1 is the Evangelical Religious Right vote. Block 2 being the Traditional Fiscal Conservative vote, and Block 3 being the National Security Hawks vote.
John McCain has never had trouble with the National Security Republicans and indeed this group can be considered his base. But it is in the other two spheres that his support begins to erode.
Everyone knows the difficulties that he has had with the Religious Right. It is a long and epic story that has resulted in a common mistrust between McCain and Social Conservatives. A mistrust that the Palin pick was supposed to remedy.
But what Bob Barr is saying is that McCain is losing out to the fiscal Republicans in his party. It is implied that Barr a libertarian is trying to snatch McCain votes for himself. But the fact that McCain has voted in favour of the bailout certainly has caused a collapse in his polling numbers in Conservative Georgia.
"Sen. Obama will not so much win Georgia, as Sen. McCain will lose the state," Barr adds.
Of course Pollster.com still has Georgia leaning Republican but if the McCain collapse continues it could hand Barack Obama a further 15 EV's and a deep red upset for Republicans.
Bob Barr is not the only one picking this up. Nate Silver says:
A related question is whether the pollsters are underrepresenting the black vote in their turnout estimates in states like Georgia. I think they might be. In their past two surveys of Georgia, SurveyUSA pegged black voter turnout at 25-26 percent. This is a pretty safe assumption, since it exactly matches the Secretary of State's turnout estimate from 2004. But this isn't 2004. I would be surprised if black turnout wasn't at least 27-28 percent, and somewhere in the 29-31 percent range is entirely possible. If those numbers are achieved, Georgia is pretty close to being a toss-up. And if it is a toss-up for Barack Obama, it is probably also a toss-up for Jim Martin, who is attempting to unseat Saxby Chambliss from the Senate.
Oh and did I mention Early Voting in Georgia is at record levels with 35.4% Block turnout?
Here is where it gets really interesting if Obama turns out the black vote in large numbers in Georgia and wins it also provides a bump to Jim Martin who is running against Senator Chambliss and is within the margin of error. If Martin were to also to win, the 60 seat Senate would look very likely.