Fresh Loaf

Looking at the results of the three polls conducted on the Atlanta mayor’s race by Insider Advantage, one thing had me confused: the percentage of undecided voters seemed to be growing as the election draws closer.

For instance, the poll released Sept. 4 showed undecideds at 12 percent. That number had risen to 23 percent by Sept. 11 and crawled up slightly to 24 percent in a poll released yesterday.

That seemed counter-intuitive; the rule of thumb is that the undecided column should shrink as voters find out more about the candidates. So I called a couple of veteran pollster/politicos to see why we might be seeing these results.

Rusty Paul, a former state GOP head and campaign consultant, says he’s seen this phenomenon before. Voters can favor a candidate early on simply because of name recognition, he says, and then grow more uncertain about their choice as they learn more about all the candidate.

Beth Shapiro, a Democratic pollster, basically agrees, but doesn’t believe that’s what’s going on with the mayor’s race. Instead, she says the Sept. 4 result is likely an anomaly. In other words, it’s wrong. That’s the only way she can make sense of the later results that show undecideds hanging at about a quarter of the electorate.

“I think voters are still kicking the tires,” she says, comparing the mayor candidates to used cars — and fairly uninspiring ones at that.

(more…)

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There’s a rumor going around (mostly peddled by Peach Pundit’s Erick Erickson) that Rusty Paul, a former state Republican Party head, has been trying to build support for a potential bid to unseat Sue Everhart, the current GOP chairwoman.

Paul says it ain’t so.

“I have not made a single call to a single person seeking support for a run for party chair,” says Paul, who already serves on the Sandy Springs City Council and runs his own political consulting business.

But, as is often the case, the rumor may have the details wrong, but it’s on target with regard to the underlying issue. Fact is, there’s a rift in the party right now over what went wrong during the lackluster election season.

Sure, the state GOP eventually managed to hang on to the U.S. Senate and PSC seats, and didn’t lose any ground in Congress, despite facing a top-o-the-ticket threat from the Obaminator. But Georgia is still a really red state and a sitting Republican senator who hadn’t been caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy (more…)

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The Nov. 4 totals in the race for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat left Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss literally a fraction below the necessary 50 percent-plus one in his race against Democratic nominee Jim Martin. As ballots were still being counted — and talk of recounts abounded — both candidates said they weren’t waiting for the last vote to be tallied. The runoff, they said, had begun.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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