Michelle Nunn not making enough progress, according to last poll

New InsiderAdvantage/FOX5/Morris News super poll, released last Friday, shows Republican David Perdue four points ahead of Democrat Michelle Nunn, 47 percent to 43 percent, in a race for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga). The poll included 947 likely voters and has +/- 3.2 margin of error.

The poll was conducted from Sept. 29 – Oct. 1. The Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford got 3 percent of support and 7 percent are still undecided.

The tabs for the poll don’t show any big changes.  Perdue is still leading among white voters, although when compared to InsiderAdvantage poll from mid-September, he lost about nine points among that group.  Nunn gained almost seven points among whites. On a flip side, Perdue gained five points among African-American voters and two points among women; Nunn didn’t move those two groups at all. Perhaps more significantly, Perdue lost seven points among independents, but they didn’t cross over to Nunn, as she only gained one point there.  

Perhaps the changes among whites and independents result from an unfortunate ad released by the Perdue campaign suggesting that Nunn has been sponsoring terrorist groups via her non-profit. The ad was criticized nationally, and fact-checked as false, but Perdue refused to take it down or apologize for it.

There is some confusion between the two InsiderAdvantage polls from September and this latest one from October. The September poll shows Nunn leading among Hispanics 63.6 percent to Perdue’s 36.4.  But the Friday poll from October shows Perdue leading 70 percent to Nunn’s 30. That kind of switch is highly unlikely, so there has to be a mistake in reporting. 

All other polls show Hispanics in Georgia voting by large majorities for Republicans.  Georgia’s Hispanic population is certainly not as liberal as in the rest of the country, but their vote does usually split closer to 50-50 for each party in none presidential races. If the polling for some reason is wrong for this group, and more will come out for Nunn, it could certainly make a difference in the results of the election.  There are approximately 220,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Georgia.

In addition, the InsiderAdvantage CEO and FOX5 political analyst Matt Towery pointed out that their poll might favor Democrats slightly.

”It should be noted that our poll weights African-American tuout at a higher rate than most other surveys, said Towery.

Democrats are engaging in very aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts, so it’s understandable that polls would take under consideration a higher tuout, especially from African-Americans. Even some black churches in Atlanta area will participate in getting people out to vote.  Democrats are fighting to keep their majority in the U.S. Senate, and Republicans only need six seats to take over the upper chamber.

The latest InsiderAdvantage survey underscores that Nunn is hardly making any progress among the voting groups that historically have been the core of the Democratic Party, which in Georgia are the minority voters.  She’s also failing to appeal to women, and in the 2014 midterms women are expected to make up 56 percent of Georgia electorate.  Just five weeks before the election, the numbers are just not adding up for Nunn. 

This coming Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 7 p.m., there will be Senatorial and gubeatorial debate in Perry, Ga, which can be viewed live on www.13wmaz.com .