May 15, 2017 3:08 PM
Ossoff Still Leading Handel 47%-45%
Ossoff and Handel are also not terribly well liked, with only 40% and 41% favorable ratings respectively.
Looking through the rest of the data there’s some ominous signs for Ossoff, including 42% of voters identifying as Republicans compared to 33% Democrats, Gov. Deal with a 53% favorability rating and an almost all white voting pool.
As a betting man: I’m going to go out on a big limb here and say Handel wins in a nail biter.
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I think I get why you’ve got 11 percent “undecided.”
They’re the nose-holders from 2016, people who voted for Trump because they’re Republicans and couldn’t stomach Clinton, despite their obvious misgivings, and are wrestling with that decision in light of current events.
There’s a tremendous psychological instinct to double-down under these circumstances — to reaffirm the rightness of their first impulses in the interest of consistency and commitment. That is particularly true for people who told others how they had voted. That’s breaking down under social proof, because there’s a lot of very, very obvious support for Ossoff among their friends and neighbors, and because it’s plainly a close race.
Ossoff is also, frankly, more likeable than Handel. It’s s–tty to hear, but it’s true; he’s younger, and attractive, and that matters at the margins.
Add to that how unlikely this moment is, how fleeting the opportunity it is for people to have a do-over of sorts, and how this may be the one chance many of these voters have to send a major signal, and that kind of temptation will pull people into the margins.
Agreed that there are some worrying signs, but a point about that poll – 6% claim they’ve already voted, which is impossible. No early voting has taken place yet, and no absentees have been mailed out, let alone returned.
Also, your concern about the partisan composition of the poll. Keep in mind that pollsters typically *start* with a projected partisan composition of the electorate, and then weight or deweight their results based on that projection. So if GA-6 has historically favored Republicans in terms of turnout, then Gravis and other pollsters would start with a framing that the turnout is going to roughly be 45% R, 30%D, 25% O, and adjust their topline numbers based on the weighted responses.
Furthermore, there are no crosstabs, and just the respondents underweight Ossoff (45% who responded and voted in the Special supported Ossoff; compared to 48% in the actual election).
The two absentee ballots from my household were received last week while we were away on vacation, and were in the mail to the DeKalb elections office Monday morning. I don’t know the first date absentee ballot application could be made, but I would think it could be made not long after the 18 April election results were certified.
“Of individuals that didn’t vote during the Primary, 53% are leaning towards Ossoff, while 32% are leaning towards Handel.”
If accurate, the donks better do what they can to get those people to the polls.
My view today is pretty standard (even agreeing with Ed), Handel narrowly, but if her internal numbers aren’t any better than the public ones she may be forced to come out and engage voters who aren’t as safe as she’s used to. That could be good or bad for her but it would let the rest of us (and I’m not a voter) see how good a campaigner she is. There are people out there who would appreciate hearing her answer some tough questions.
The Gravis Marketing poll which has Ossoff ahead also reported an unbelievable, unrealistic statistic—29 percent of the respondents being black. That would be a more credible figure from a poll in, say, Rick Allen’s Augsuta-based 12th District, not a district where according to data from the Secretary of State, just 11 percent of those who voted last November were black.
It will be interesting to see later tonight the results from the Senate 32 runoff, in which in theory Republican Katie Kirkpatrick should be favored. Most of that Senate district overlaps with the 6th Congressional District. Ossoff got 41% last month in the parts of SD 32 that overlap with CD 6 (small portions of SD 32 overlap with CD 11). If Kirkpatrick is held to say something in the mid 50s, that may bode well for Ossoff next month, who doesn’t need to win the SD 32 part of CD 6 next month but probably has to get somewhere in the mid 40s to win the runoff—obviously Ossoff is not going to run as well in SD 32 as he will in DeKalb (the DeKalb part of CD 6 is concentrated in Senator Fran Millar’s SD 40—and Ossoff won a solid majority in SD 40 in the first round.)
Also, anyone notice the NRCC ads critical of Ossoff for supporting Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal? I doubt 1 in 10 voters in CD 6 wakes up every morning worrying about what Teheran is planning for the future, but one wonders if the ad is aimed at Jewish voters, who clearly gave the Democrat a lot of support on April 18? (The 6th District easily has the largest share of Georgia’s Jewish population, though the Gravis Marketing poll, which reported 5 percent of the district’s voters being Jewish, probably underreports that segment of the electorate—I would suspect it to be closer to the 8-10 percent range—and that could be critical in a race that may come down to 51-49% either way.)
So ACP, if Jared Kushner can’t work on Saturday, how does the Israeli government function on Saturday when necessary?
Because under Jewish law the rules observed by the Sabbath are superseded by threat to human life. Example…if your wife goes into labor during the Sabbath, you can drive her to the hospital. If your country is attacked you are allowed to fight back, etc. (from another Reform Jew).
As for this poll…its not a polling firm, its a marketing (messaging) firm.
Because in theory, he could be working to save lives every second if he wanted to, it would be interesting to see where Jared Kushner draws his lines. But to my knowledge he hasn’t held his Judaism out there like that. I haven’t seen the NRCC ad, but highlighting the Iran deal kinda sounds like they may be targeting Jewish voters. I don’t know the split in the 6th, but over the past decade the national Jewish Dem/Repub split went from like over 90% Dem to- last I read, God knows when- it was more like approaching 75%-80% Dem. I don’t think Iran is an issue which will convert any to cross party lines, though.
Also, the 6th is a very educated district. They can see the benefit of the deal. Also, a note on Ultra Orthodox Judaism…I find it to be very much like a cult. Thats a little off topic, but you should think of it with that in mind (also Orthodox congregations run a pretty wide gambit as well. I would call the Kushners closer to very observant Conservative Jews rather than Orthodox. I have never seen Jared keep his head covered in public and I know no Orthodox Jew that would not always have his head covered)
Andrew, thanks for your explanation earlier today concerning different types of Jews…I get the impression that Jewish voters generally don’t look to Netanyahu or Jerusalem in terms of how they vote anymore than Catholics look to what the Vatican is saying these days on ABC. (The Catholic vote in this country is more an “up for grabs” vote—in recent elections, not giving landslides to either party.). Romney won about 30 percent of the Jewish vote in 2012 according to exit polls but Trump dropped to 24 percent last November. The estimated Jewish population in CD 6 (based on 2013 info from dailykos website) was about 60,000 (population, not registered voters).
The Iranian deal is probably not on the radar screen of most voters (can anyone really recite the details?), but given the extensive American military involvement in Afghanistan (approaching 16 years) and Iraq (14 years), having to send ground troops to pacify Iran is probably not something a president would want to do these days, given the other commitments we have.
Well one thing’s for certain, whoever the 6th chooses is going to have a hard time making sure their donors get returns on their investments. Just a disgusting amount of money in this race.