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October 19, 2004

AJC buries the lede

The AJC has written three stories based on 1 poll they commissioned last week.

Here are the two stories they emphasized on their website with big headlines:
Georgia Sticking With Republicans
Democratic Georgia Grew Into a GOP Peach

Here is the story they buried:
Perdue vulnerable in '06, poll shows.

Here is what their poll showed:
Bush 51 - Kerry 41. 2000 results Bush 55 (-4) - Gore 43 (-2). So, a net loss of 2 points (and actually greater because of the incumbent rule in polling) and "Georgia sticks with GOP" is trumpeted. More like GOP loses ground in Georgia. And then they write a story about Georgia turning into a Republican state and use 3 solidly Republican counties that voted for Jimmy Carter and no other Democrat in the last 45 years as "proof."

So now they have this poll with Sonny Perdue's job approval rating at 43% and theoretical head to heads with Mark Taylor or Cathy Cox tied in the low 40's. That is a terrible poll for an incumbent. Roy Barnes didn't drop below 50 until the last few months of his re-election campaign, Perdue is already there.

They also say that his 43% job approval rating isn't that much worse than his 46% rating a year ago. That may be true, but the rumor is that his disapproval rating is above 50 by an amount outside the margin of error. In other words, if this is a sound poll, at least half of the state has already decided that it is time for someone new in the governor's office.

The bottom line is that Jim Wooten can argue about how Republican this state is becoming on the opinion page all he wants. But when you commission a scientific survey to actually tell you just how Republican the state is, it might be a good idea to actually report those results without your CW bias seeping through.

Posted by Chris at October 19, 2004 12:56 AM

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