Georgia Senate and gubernatorial races: Republicans lead slightly

In a new poll by SurveyUSA released Tuesday afteoon, Republican David Perdue is leading his Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn 48-45 in the battle for Georgia’s Senate seat, and Republican Georgia Goveor Nathan Deal is ahead of Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter 46-44 in the race for goveor.

In both contests, Libertarians Amanda Swafford, who is running for Senate, and Andrew Hunt, running for goveor, received 3 percent of the vote. The surveys included 611 likely Georgia voters, including those who already voted, and were conducted Oct. 24-27.  The margin of error is +/- 4 percent.

Since the SurveyUSA poll released last week, the biggest changes in the two races are the female and the independent vote. Both Republicans appear to have gained more support among women.  Deal went from 40 percent among women in the survey released last week, to 47 percent this week, which is actually higher than his Democratic opponent who got 44 percent this week (45 percent last week.)

Perdue was polling at 38 percent among women last week to Nunn’s 51 percent, but this week Perdue is at 46 percent to Nunn’s 48. The female vote is especially important this year, because women are expected to hold anywhere between 54-56 percent of the vote.

In the Senate race, Nunn is trailing her Democratic opponent among the independents. That’s interesting, because the independent vote tends to be more evenly split, and in the goveor’s race Carter wins it by one point this week, 39 percent to Deal’s 38.  Nunn is behind among independents 33 percent to Perdue’s 46.  

In the SurveyUSA poll from last week, both candidates for Senate were at 40 percent among the independents. Incidentally, in the goveor’s race last week, it was Carter who was behind in this group 33 percent to Deal’s 40.  So either the non-party candidates are still very confused, or the sample size was very different from last week.

The Election Day is just one week away on Nov. 4^th, and the likely runoffs will be on Dec 2^nd for the goveor’s race and Jan. 6^th for the Senate race.