Pollster.com lists Georgia as one of only two states (with Montana) that qualify as "Lean Republican." The others are either solid red, toss-up or are some shade of blue. Looking at the Georgia polls over the past few months, it's actually been pretty consistently a single digit race (the Pollster trend estimate has McCain up by 7), which is pretty remarkable given that Bush won Georgia by 17 points just 4 years ago.
The latest poll out of the state is from Survey USA, which shows McCain up by 8, a net gain of 3 points for Obama since the last week of September.
One thing to look out for in Georgia is the early voting, which started there on September 22. Ben Smith is reporting that as of Tuesday, just about 500,000 voters have cast ballots early or absentee, which is 75,000 more than voted early in all of 2004. Another stunning figure: 37% of them are African-Americans, a group that makes up 29% of the population and a group that Survey USA estimates will make up 26% of the electorate. Are we seeing yet another under-estimation of African-American turnout? Not that it will be above 30% necessarily, but one suspects that it might reach their proportion of the population, as PPP is estimating it will in North Carolina. As for who's winning the early voting in SUSA's poll, it really should come as no surprise:
Early and absentee voting began in Georgia on 09/22/08. Among the 18% of Georgia voters who tell SurveyUSA they have already voted, Obama leads by 6 points; among those who have not yet voted, McCain leads by 11.
Obama is banking votes at a record pace and the further behind McCain gets nationwide, the less motivated McCain supporters will be to even show up on Nov. 4th, let alone before. Georgia could turn out to be a sleeper.
It also is home to one of the more intriguing senate races of the cycle. Most estimates consider Democrats to be fairly likely to win 8 seats for a 59 seat total in the Senate with Lieberman (Nate Silver's model gives it a better than 40% chance) and by the look of things, Jim Martin in Georgia may be poised to be the 60th.
One recent poll has Martin tied with Saxby Chambliss and the SUSA poll that had McCain up 8 has Chambliss up just 3. In an interesting sign of some Obama coattails, Jim Martin is winning those who have already voted by 4 points, while Chambliss is winning those who've yet to vote by 4 points. Although, since Martin is outperforming Obama in the state, here's hoping Martin helps Obama as much as Obama helps him.
A few more signs of real momentum in Jim Martin's direction:
We moved Georgia to Lean Republican last week (see October 9 Update), but what we are hearing from political insiders familiar with the state leads us to move it over to Toss Up today.
n his almost six years in the U.S. Senate, Saxby Chambliss has built a reputation as a loyal defender of President Bush and his policies and as a champion of corporate interests.The people of Georgia now have to decide whether that's the senator they want for the next six years as well.
And conclude:
[Jim Martin] is what he seems like, a smart guy who wants to help his fellow Georgians and doesn't care who gets the credit. [...]Overall...the best candidate is Martin. In what look to be six difficult years ahead, he would do well for the people of Georgia.
Help Jim Martin continue to build on his momentum over at ActBlue.
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