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October 16, 2004
Georgia Deadlocked?
The AJC released a poll of Georgia voters showing Bush leading 51-41 with 8% undecided. Inexplicably the headline is "Georgia sticks with GOP." Now, this may be what's actually happening. The poll is by Zogby which a lot of people don't trust, but if you were writing a headline based on this poll a better headline would be "Bush clings to bare majority in Georgia."
Am I crazy? Nope. Does the headline writer know about the 50% and undecideds rule? Nope. Bush is an incumbent President, which means most of those undecideds will break against him, let's say by a 2-1 ratio. If that were the case, Bush could be expected to get about 53% with Kerry taking 47%.
That's not that close, but it is closer than 2000 (when Bush was not running with the powers of incumbency) when the final vote was Bush 55 Gore 43. So, Bush goes from winning the state by 12 points to leading by 10 points (51-41) to what could potentially be a 6 or 7 point victory and the headline is "Georgia sticks with GOP."
The AJC should be smarter than this. First, they should report the actual results of their poll regardless of what the CW is at the paper. They should also recall that their own reporting shows huge gains in voter registration this year (a Newsweek article lists Georgia as one of the few states with a greater than 10% increase in voter registration). These huge gains should place a big astericks in all of their election reporting, and especially considering that Georgia's new registers demographically are more Democratic than the electorate was in 2000 and 2002.
I'm not willing to endorse the notion that Georgia will be that close, but a headline that says "Georgia close" and then says that based on this poll and registration efforts Georgia could theoretically be within 4 or 5 points on election day would be just as valid as "Georgia Sticks with GOP."
Posted by Chris at October 16, 2004 01:26 PM
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