GA-Gov: A new poll from the Republican firm Insider Advantage for Fox 5 Atlanta gives Gov. Brian Kemp a 41-22 lead over his newly-announced foe in next year's GOP primary, former Sen. David Perdue, with former state Rep. Vernon Jones in third with 11%. That finding doesn't square at all, though, with Fox 5’s own headline, which reads, “Dead Heat between Kemp, Perdue due to Trump endorsement.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution likewise trumpeted, “Brian Kemp and David Perdue neck-and-neck in early poll.” Twitter, of course, followed suit. So what gives?
It turns out that the local Fox station was touting a question it shouldn't have touted. As in any normal poll, Insider Advantage asked respondents how they'd vote in the primary, yielding that 19-point Kemp lead. It then followed up by asking, “As you may have heard, President Trump is planning to endorse David Perdue in the Republican Primary for Governor. Knowing this information, how would you vote?”
When presented with this news, Kemp sinks into a 34-34 tie with Perdue, while Jones ticks down slightly to 10%. And sure enough, Trump went ahead and endorsed Perdue's nascent campaign on Tuesday over Kemp whose rejection of the Big Lie single handedly turned the governor from Trump favorite to outcast.
It’s absolutely fine for pollsters to ask questions like this, which are known as informed ballot tests, as long as they do so after they ask about the horserace without any prompting. And this finding does indeed tell us that Perdue could benefit mightily in the primary by making sure no one forgets he’s Trump’s chosen candidate.
What’s not okay, though, is for media organizations to treat the results of the second question as though it represents the true results of the poll. As Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin writes, “Trump has already endorsed Perdue, yes, but that hasn't made the race a dead heat. Kemp begins with a 19-point lead.” He adds, “That's the reflection of reality. Everything else in the poll is simulated and far less notable.”
It's simulated because Perdue has yet to actually communicate Trump's endorsement to primary voters, something that's much more time-consuming and expensive to do compared with a pollster simply sharing that information with a few hundred respondents in a survey.
It’s quite possible, of course, that whatever lead Kemp starts with will collapse by May's primary after Perdue and his forces have had half a year to play up Trump's preference for the challenger every chance they get, but that doesn’t mean we can treat the informed ballot question as the true state of the race. Kemp himself will not lack for resources, and he’ll have the chance to spread his own narrative about Perdue, who lost re-election in a January runoff that helped cost Team Red the Senate.
There’s no way to know if the governor’s messaging will sink in, of course, but Kemp will at least have a chance to convince voters that the race is something other than just a fight between the Trump-endorsed Perdue and himself. After all, plenty of candidates Trump has backed have nonetheless gone down to defeat—and that's something reporters and analysts alike shouldn't lose sight of.