U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn (D. GA)
Yep, things are tightening up in Georgia:
http://www.11alive.com/...
One week before early voting begins in Georgia's upcoming election, the races are closer than ever.
An exclusive 11Alive News poll conducted by SurveyUSA shows the Senate race tied between the Republican and Democrat candidates. A slightly larger gap exists between the top two candidates in the gubernatorial race.
According to the SurveyUSA poll, Republican Senate candidate David Perdue holds 46 percent of the vote, while Democrat Michelle Nunn has 45 percent. That's close enough for the race to be called even.
SurveyUSA said Perdue holds 77 percent of conservative voters. Nunn holds 87 percent of the Democratic base, but also leads among moderates by 22 points.
Libertarian Senate candidate Amanda Swafford has three percent of the vote, while six percent of voters are undecided.
In the race for governor, Republican incumbent Nathan Deal has a two-point advantage over Democrat challenger Jason Carter -- a change from two weeks ago, when Carter had a slight lead over Deal. Deal has 46 percent of the vote, Carter has 44 percent and Libertarian Andrew Hunt has four percent. Seven percent of voters are undecided.
While Carter leads by seven points among female voters, Deal has polled at 50 or 51 percent among men, meaning Carter is not as strong among women as Deal is among men, according to the poll. - 11 Alive, 10/8/14
Can't say I'm surprised, especially with the past polling problems:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Polls show Mr. Perdue leading Ms. Nunn by about three percentage points. The various Senate models, including The Upshot’s, give Ms. Nunn about as good a shot — roughly 20 percent — of winning as Democratic incumbents in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska. But there’s reason to wonder whether her chances are better still: Recent polls are most likely underestimating the share of voters who are black, along with Ms. Nunn’s share of the vote.
The best evidence is that most recent polls are based on an electorate that’s no more diverse than in 2010, the last midterm election. In some polls, black voters represent an even smaller share of the electorate than in 2010. But Georgia has clearly become less white in the last four years.
According to data from the Georgia secretary of state, the 2010 electorate was 66.3 percent white and 28.2 percent black. Since then, the white share of registered voters has fallen, to 58 percent from 62.6 percent. White voters turn out at somewhat higher rates than other voters in midterm election, so we should expect the white share of the actual vote to be a little higher. Combining the data on registered voters with census data on the voter-eligible population, I expect the 2014 electorate to be about 64.2 percent white and 28.8 percent black. (Ms. Nunn is expected to win at least 90 percent of the black vote.)
Yet the last four nonpartisan polls that released demographic data showed an electorate that’s 65.7 percent white and 25.7 percent black. Those polls show Mr. Perdue ahead by 3.3 points, but they would show something closer to a dead heat if the likely electorate matched my estimates.
Why do the polls show an electorate that’s no more diverse than 2010, even though there has been considerable demographic change?
A bit of the explanation is that the polls are being weighted to census estimates that haven’t kept up with demographic change. Most traditional surveys sponsored by the news media take a random sample of adults and then weight the sample to demographic targets from the census for variables like race, gender and age.
The catch is that the census products aren’t completely up to date. The census itself is now four years old, and the most recent estimates for 2013 just came out last month.
The exact targets for demographic weighting don’t usually make a discernible difference in the polls. Neither does the age of the product, which is invariably a year or even a few years out of date. But Georgia is perhaps the single state where it would make a noticeable difference, because of the degree of racial polarization and the pace of demographic change. - New York Times, 10/8/14
Plus there's this:
http://www.myajc.com/...
An unusually high number of residents have registered to vote in the Peach State this year, and thousands are still awaiting approval just days before early voting starts Monday across Georgia.
With voting officials still scrambling to process applicants, it could mean the start of another controversial election in the state.
More 212,000 have been added to voter rolls so far this year as the Nov. 4 midterm election approaches.
On average, a county election office may see 50 to 70 pending voter applications, said Chris Harvey, the chief investigator for the Secretary of State’s Office. This year, it’s 2,000 to 3,000, which Harvey called “uncharacteristically high.” - Atlanta Journal Constitution, 10/7/14
We have great shots here people! Click here to donate and get involved with Nunn and Carter's campaigns:
http://www.michellenunn.com/
https://carterforgovernor.com/