Mason-Dixon for Georgia Newspaper Partnership (8/2-4, likely voters, no trendlines):
Karen Handel (R): 47
Nathan Deal (R): 42
Undecided: 11
(MoE: ±4%)
InsiderAdvantage (8/5, likely voters, no trendlines):
Karen Handel (R): 46
Nathan Deal (R): 46
Undecided: 8
(MoE: ±4.6%)
Landmark (8/7, likely voters, 8/1 in parentheses):
Nathan Deal (R): 44 (37)
Karen Handel (R): 42 (46)
Undecided: 14 (17)
(MoE: ±3.9%)
Georgia's GOP gubernatorial runoff is tomorrow, and as things reach a climax, no fewer than three pollsters are out today with their final look at the race. Karen Handel won the first round pretty easily, but it's looking like Nathan Deal has finally consolidated a substantial amount of the conservative vote behind him that he'd previously shared with Eric Johnson and John Oxendine. (Which, of course, isn't to say that the Sarah Palin-backed, let's-repeal-the-state-income-tax Handel is some sort of moderate, just that stylistically she's staking out somewhat less red-meat-intensive turf.)
If you average these polls out, you might think that Handel had a small advantage going into tomorrow, but the fine print seems to give Deal most of the momentum. The three polls here, arranged by chronological order in which they were taken, give successively better performances to Deal. And the one poll here with trendlines (Mason-Dixon and InsiderAdvantage have both polled this race repeatedly, but in each case this is their first post-primary pre-runoff poll), Republican pollster Landmark, actually switches from a significant Handel lead to a teeny Deal lead. Considering that Democratic ex-Gov. Roy Barnes would probably rather face Deal than Handel (and thus have the moderate turf all to himself, as well as the ethics cudgel), he might actually catch yet another break here. |
