Poll shows Deal with slight lead; Senate race remains tight

Gov. Nathan Deal has opened a slight lead over his Democratic challenger, while the race for an open U.S. Senate seat is deadlocked, according to a poll of likely voters conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The poll provides strong evidence that both contests could be forced into separate runoffs, bringing an extra dose of campaign ads to your holiday season. Libertarian contenders are tallying above 5 percent, threatening to deprive the leading contenders of the majority needed to win outright Nov. 4.

The results also point to tantalizing opportunities for the top two candidates in each race. A stubborn gender gap persists, with more men rallying behind the Republican contenders while women tend to back the Democrats. The GOP has done little to make inroads to minority voters, and Democrats struggle to attract white support.

And with nine days left, the campaigns are chasing a small but significant cadre of undecided voters.

The poll has Deal, a Republican, tallying 46 percent of likely voters, including those leaning toward one candidate. Democrat Jason Carter holds 41 percent, and Libertarian Andrew Hunt has a 5 percent share.

The hotly contested race for an open U.S. Senate seat is even tighter. Republican Senate nominee David Perdue notched 44 percent compared with 42 percent for Democrat Michelle Nunn and 6 percent for Libertarian Amanda Swafford. The race is within the poll’s margin of error of 3.6 percentage points and is therefore considered a statistical tie.

The poll, conducted by Abt SRBI of New York, surveyed 1,170 Georgians from Oct. 16 to 23. It was a live caller survey with a mix of cellphone and land-line users.

If no candidate earns 50 percent of the vote plus one on Election Day, the contest goes to a runoff. Because of a federal judge’s decision last year to allow more time for overseas balloting, the federal runoff — in this case, for the U.S. Senate — will be contested Jan. 6, while the governor’s runoff would be Dec. 2.

“It’s hard to see someone getting to the 50 percent threshold,” said Seth Brohinsky, an associate at Abt SRBI.

Since an AJC poll last month, Deal and Nunn have improved their standing. This finding matches other public polling of late.

Deal has made headway partly due to the wave of negative attack ads pounding Carter, claiming his plans are too costly for Georgia. The Republican Governors Association has pumped more than $4 million into the race and the group's chairman, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, is set to return to Georgia next week.

Nunn, a nonprofit executive and the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, has targeted Perdue on his corporate past in outsourcing. A recently revealed 2005 deposition in which Perdue says he "spent most of my career" outsourcing followed by a comment that he was "proud" of his career have provided fodder for a flood of attacks by Nunn and outside groups.

With poll numbers showing the race a dead heat, national money and surrogates have poured into Georgia for a race that could decide which party controls the Senate next year.

The poll has Deal in a more favorable position than Perdue, a former Fortune 500 chief executive, thanks in part to independent voters. Some 52 percent of respondents who align as independent, a group in Georgia that tends to lean to the right, backs Deal’s candidacy compared with 43 percent for Perdue.

David Cook, a 74-year-old Vinings retiree and independent, has already voted a straight Republican ticket — he didn’t want to leave anything up to chance. He supported Perdue, he said, because he wanted a political outsider with a business background in office. So why, then, is he backing Deal, a congressman-turned-governor, as well?

“I don’t think that Jason Carter has much in the way of experience,” he said of the two-term state senator, whose grandfather is former President Jimmy Carter. “And I’m assuming that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. I didn’t much like his granddad.”

The poll shows the Democrat lags in attracting white voters such as Cook. Democratic strategists have said that their campaigns seek to earn 30 percent of the white vote, but the poll shows Carter hovering closer to 23 percent. He can make that up with a strong showing from minority voters — Democrats are hopeful black turnout will exceed 30 percent of the electorate.

The poll’s sample is 29 percent African-American, which the pollsters said is a sign of increased enthusiasm. The AJC’s September poll used a strict likely voter screen that left the black share of the electorate at 24 percent. More than 80 percent of black voters are backing Nunn and Carter.

“We were early on in September in the last poll, and the point we made is a good deal will depend on mobilizing the minority vote, the African-American vote,” said Mark Schulman, a founding partner of Abt SRBI and its chief research officer. “And clearly as we’re getting closer to the election that number has grown.”

Republicans face their own challenges, as the poll is the latest sign a gender gap has solidified. A slight majority of likely male voters backs Deal, while Carter enjoys a comparable advantage among women. A similar split formed in the Senate race.

“I just think the Republicans are going to put women back where we were decades ago,” said Lynn Bruce, a 62-year-old small-business owner from Peachtree Corners. “I see the Republicans as trying to take back all these gains we made. And as a child of the ’60s, that scares me.”

Women form about 50 percent of the poll sample, even though they represented 55 percent of the 2010 general election balloting.

“That’s what people are telling us as to who’s going to show up on Election Day,” Brohinksy said.

The wild cards are Libertarian voters such as John Peoples, 58, of Woodstock.

Even though he is a registered Republican, Peoples called GOP hopefuls “idiots running around like a chicken with their heads cut off.”

“That includes all of the Georgia candidates, as well as the national candidates,” Peoples said. “And I don’t see anything better on the Democratic side.”

But the poll shows the Libertarian candidates engender the least enthusiasm, meaning their supporters could stay home or shift to a Republican or Democrat. In 2010 Libertarian candidates mostly took less than 4 percent.

Voter fatigue could kick in with the growing possibility that the contests could stretch beyond November. Turnout generally drops dramatically for runoffs, but more than 90 percent of likely voters say they would return to the polls if needed.

“I’ll go back to the polls and vote again,” said Teresa Green, a 57-year-old from Rabun Gap. “Absolutely. Every vote counts.”