Fresh Loaf

A new Insider Advantage poll shows Mary Norwood’s still the frontrunner in the Atlanta mayor’s race with 45 percent support. Kasim Reed trails with 25 percent. Lisa Borders, who until two weeks ago was second in the race, is third with 16 percent. Jesse Spikes is in the low single digits. Eleven percent of the poll respondents were undecided. (Here’s a link to a PDF of the poll’s crosstabs.)

So sayeth pollster Matt Towery, CEO of IA:

“Based on this survey, if the election were held today, Norwood would likely be within one or two percent of winning the race without a runoff. Her barrage of ads and the apparent decline in Borders’ support suggests that white voters are moving to Norwood. That said, Reed now appears to be the African-American candidate with substantial support from the black community.

What’s interesting about the mayor’s race right now: It’s about image rather than platforms.

Borders, Reed and even the Georgia Democratic Party have accused Norwood of being a Republican. Norwood, who invited the criticism after she said earlier this week that she couldn’t remember if she ever voted for George W. Bush, responded with a TV ad. In it, she rattles off the names of Democrats and even Ross Perot, which, in my opinion, might’ve done her more harm than good.

The Reed campaign today issued a statement calling the Norwood spot a “slick and calculated denial of her well-documented Republican past” and a “scheme to trick Atlanta’s Democratic majority into making a false choice on the eve of this election.”

Political wonks take note: Campaign disclosure reports, which’ll tell us how much cash each candidate has to spend in the final days before Nov. 3, are due today at 5 p.m.

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Looks like this sucker’s starting to get a little more competitive:

The race for the Atlanta mayor’s office got a little tighter in the last week, according to a new poll released Friday.

The new WSB-TV Channel 2/InsiderAdvantage poll shows that Mary Norwood still leads the race with 33 percent, but her lead over Lisa Borders slipped to just six percentage points. Last week Norwood led Borders by eight percentage points.

Although she is still second in the race, Borders actually dropped in percentage points, going from 34 percent to 27 percent this week.

The big gainer was Kasim Reed. He remained in third place, but jumped from nine percentage points to 15 percent.

There are still plenty of folks to convince. Twenty-three percent of the poll’s respondents are still undecided.

(more…)

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Matt Towery — former GOP state legislator, political pollster and possessor of the most otherworldly tan this side of John Boehner — has put to work the most advanced polling tools available at his disposal and determined the Atlanta mayoral race is…a three-way tossup between Council President Lisa Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood and state Sen. Kasim Reed.

Oh, and furthermore, it’ll probably go to a runoff.

Well, frankly, I came to those same conclusions weeks ago and I don’t own a fancy polling firm.

But Towery goes on to share some of his insights into the dynamics of the race. Here’s Matt:

The candidate who buys substantial television post-Aug. 1 will, based on every pattern I have seen, be likely to make the runoff. There is a caveat here. That candidate must have a deep enough level of support to be able to build on the huge name identification boost he or she will receive by being daring and “going for it” early. The only way this strategy works is if the candidate is already viewed as credible and by becoming the “frontrunner,” he or she then basically scares the money on the sidelines into supplying another round of serious cash to keep the television and radio buys going until election day.

And here he offers the perspective of a jaded ex-politico:

If you think turnout will be light in November, try December. That’s where a little thing called “street money” will become critical. In the South, money paid to “consultants,” tithed to churches, donated to charities and just plain handed out has played a huge role in turnout in the black community. That tradition dried up with the 2002 race for governor between Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue. The Barnes crowd put their money into television — in part because so many top African-American leaders had significant races of their own (or involving family members) that there seemed no need to put cash in the community.

(more…)

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Actually, with bags under his eyes, the former governor didn’t look all that rested at his afternoon press conference today. Nor did he look like he’d been getting a lot of sun lately (although InsiderAdvantage chief Matt Towery, who was in the audience, was tan enough for everybody).

But Roy certainly seemed ready. Smiling, surrounded by his family, taking questions, cracking jokes — here was a guy who makes political campaigning look like fun. And the press corps was eating it up. Because now we’ve really got a race to cover.

Barnes’ entrance into the guv’s race will shake things up in a big way. Not immediately, mind you. All three announced Democratic candidates — state Attorney General Thurbert Baker, state House Minority Leader DuBose Porter and former this-and-that David Poythress — quickly sent out terse announcements saying they weren’t stepping aside. But come on. For months now, polls have shown that the front-runner’s slot was Barnes’ if he wanted it.

Now, after all the waiting, we know he wants it.

(more…)

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1) Going with Jenny opens at Theatrical Outfit.

2) Political insider Matt Towery discusses Paranoid Nation: The Real Story of the 2008 Fight for the Presidency at Manuel’s Tavern.

3) Semi Precious Weapons and Nico Vega play Drunken Unicorn.

4) Stephen J. Cannell discusses On the Grind at Margaret Mitchell House & Museum.

5) Junior League Band plays Smith’s Olde Bar.

(Photo by Chris Bartelski)

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Matt Towery is the sort of conservative-bent political insider that doesn’t make perfect sense inside the notoriously liberal Manuel’s Tavern. But the folks down at Manuel’s are always up for a good discussion over beers, especially when it comes to politics. Promoting his latest book Paranoid Nation, Towery will take an in depth look at the political machinations behind Obama, Hillary, and McCain in the 2008 election. Towery has been on the inside track of politics since the early ’80s, back when he was campaign strategist for Newt Gingrich, so it’s a safe bet that he knows a thing or two about the political game these days. Festivities start at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 28.

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Almost everyone is surprised at how well Democrats Barack Obama and Jim Martin are faring in Georgia against their Republican counterparts John McCain and Saxby Chambliss.

One political commentator who isn’t: Matt Towery.

On June 19, the former state rep. and principal of Southern Political Report wrote the following about the 2008 election in Georgia:

“My view is that Georgia, the 9^th largest state in the nation with 15 electoral votes, will remain a major new battleground state through November. This changes the landscape of electoral politics as Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and perhaps another surprise southern state, join Florida as potential “swing states,” that cannot be presumed to vote Republican in 2008.”

Towery’s comments accompanied a June Insider Advantage poll showing McCain and Obama almost tied in Georgia.

(Hat-tip to Fresh Loaf commenter Poverty Wench, whose recent comment prompted me to dig through Towery’s archives.)

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InsiderAdvantage, the polling firm/political newsletter run by former GOP legislator Matt Towery, says both the presidential race and the U.S. Senate race have narrowed to become virtual toss-ups in Georgia. Here’s the results of a poll his firm took Thursday of 615 likely voters:

Presidential
Obama, 48 percent
McCain, 47 percent
Other, 2 percent
Undecided, 3 percent

U.S. Senate
Chambliss, 44 percent
Martin, 42 percent
Buckley, 2 percent
Undecided, 12 percent

The margin of error is 3.8 percent, meaning both races are coin flips. Towery, however, seems to give both Obama and Martin the edge:

The senate race appears in my judgment either headed for a runoff or a Martin win, and here’s why I say that: over 15 percent of blacks say they still are undecided.

Saxby needs to find a Bubba the Plumber real quick!

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Barack Obama’s chances in Georgia aren’t as strong as once thought, according to a new survey from InsiderAdvantage.

When asked who they would vote for if the election were held today, more than 56 percent of 506 registered likely voters said John McCain. Obama trailed with 38 percent. (Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate who’s been considered a possible vote-stealer from McCain, was not included as a choice in the survey.)

Says InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery:

“This is a huge slide from what had been, in our prior surveys, a relatively close race. The reason is simple—Obama lost serious ground in virtually every demographic.

“At first glance it would seem that Obama is headed for no better than the low 40 percentile level achieved by John Kerry in 2004. But let me warn observers that in both our national tracking and surveys in other states, the biggest change has been a near parity between the two candidates among the youngest of voters.

“Should that group return to Obama and the African-American vote end up where we expect it to be, the race could be closer in November. But as of now Georgia is no longer a “leans McCain” state. As of this survey, Georgia is in the McCain column.”

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