Poll: Presidential, Senate contests are tight in Georgia
Joe Biden has pulled neck and neck with President Donald Trump in Georgia, and the state’s two incumbent Republican senators are also in tight contests, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday.
The Democratic presidential nominee is leading Trump 50 percent to 47 percent. A slim majority of respondents, 51 percent to 47, approved of the job Trump has done as president. At the same time, however, 53 percent disapproved of the president’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis, compared with 45 percent who said Trump is doing a good job.
That sentiment was echoed elsewhere in the survey, as those polled said they believed Trump would do a better job than Biden with the economy, but Biden drew higher marks than Trump on managing the coronavirus and health care issues.
Only 2 percent of those who indicated they would vote for president said they were open to changing their minds.
The survey was conducted Sept. 23-27 among 1,125 likely Georgia voters, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
It's one of a handful of recent polls to show a tight presidential race in the state, which a Democrat has not won since Bill Clinton in 1992. A Monmouth University poll had Trump up 47-to-46, and an Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey had the race tied at 47 percent apiece. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Trump leading by 1.2 percentage points.
The Quinnipiac poll also shows Sen. David Perdue locked with his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, 49 percent to 48 percent, and Ossoff leading self-identified independents by a 10-point margin.
“This Georgia race looms as one of several that could shift the balance of power in the U.S. Senate,” Quinnipiac’s polling analyst, Tim Malloy, said in a news release.
In the special election for Georgia’s other Senate seat, Democrat Raphael Warnock led both Republican frontrunners — incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins — in the so-called jungle primary. Raphael polled at 31 percent, Loeffler at 23 percent and Collins at 22 percent.
The poll further indicates a surge in support for Warnock, who registered 21 percent support in the Monmouth University survey released last week after polling in the single digits in July. Former President Jimmy Carter, who was Georgia’s governor in the early 1970s, endorsed Warnock on Tuesday, and local Democrats have been urging the other Democratic candidates in the race — Matt Lieberman and Ed Tarver, whom Quinnipiac reported at 9 and 4 percent, respectively — to drop out in order to bolster Warnock‘s shot at the top two.
With no candidate near the 50-percent threshold, the contest is likely to head to a runoff. Earlier in the year it was expected that Loeffler and Collins would be squaring off head to head, but the Democratic, Atlanta-based pastor’s rise has raised the possibility of a two-party challenge.
Nearly three-quarters of voters said they planned to cast their ballots in person, with 42 percent saying they intended to go to the polls on Election Day and 32 percent saying they would vote early. Only 23 percent said they planned to vote by mail in Georgia, where the tightly contested 2018 gubernatorial contest was marred by accusations of voter suppression and other challenges.
A majority, 52 percent, said they would like to see the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court filled by the person who wins the election, rather than before Nov. 3 as Trump and Senate Republicans are set on doing. Those results track with other national and swing-state polling on the issue.
