At Newsweek, Natalie Colarossi reports “Just two weeks ahead of Georgia’s critical Senate runoff races, a new poll shows Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue trailing behind Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.” Colarossi adds,
The survey, conducted by SurveyUSA, shows Warnock leading Loeffler by 7 percentage points among likely voters. Ossoff maintains a 5-point advantage over Perdue….The survey took place between December 16 and 21 and involved 800 respondents, 600 of whom said they were likely to vote in the January contests….According to the new data, Ossoff has widened his lead by 2 points after a SurveyUSA poll conducted three weeks earlier, while Warnock’s lead remains unchanged.
Colarossi speculates that the Democrats’ leads could be attributed to “Republican infighting over President Donald Trump‘s allegations that the election process is “rigged.” After weeks of Trump challenging the results of the presidential election with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, some Georgia conservatives have said they will sit out the Senate runoffs.” Further,
Among those who identified as “very conservative” in the poll, 55 percent said they are not voting in the runoffs because “the voting process is rigged,” while 7 percent said they are “intentionally boycotting” the runoffs. That number compares with the zero percent of those who identify as either “liberal” or “very liberal,” according to the data.
However, Colarossi notes that “Georgia’s unprecedented double runoffs have generated a record-breaking number of early voters.” The combined 12 point lead of Warnock and Ossoff is the largest reported for the Democrats by a major pollster since the November presidential election.
President Trump has been threatening to revisit Georgia to stump for Republican incumbents Perdue and Loeffler. But it is unclear whether he helps or hurts their races overall.
Of course, this is only one poll. But the respected FiveThirtyEight website’s poll analysts give SurveyUSA an “A” rating — the highest rating among 11 pollsters which have conducted surveys for the runoff elections since the November 3rd general election.
Percents don’t matter absent raw numbers. If neither is over 50%, then neither is obviously going to win, or even arguably going to win, even if we believe polls after the last two debacles.
I don’t care what the margin is. If the actual numbers are not being reported, there must be a reason why.