Democrats at the national level have begun pumping money into Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, once thought to be a sure-bet for Republicans but now a real horse race, according to recent polls.
By late Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had bought about $500,000 worth of advertising time on at least five metro Atlanta television stations for spots to support Democratic senate candidate Jim Martin in his uphill battle against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Moultrie. The spots begin running today.
Chambliss has a 4-to-1 fund-raising advantage over Martin, meaning the Republican can buy a lot more advertsing time in the final three weeks of the campaign. The injection from the national Democratic committee could help Martin bridge that gap.
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As of late Tuesday afternoon, Atlanta’s five network affiliates: WSB, WXIA, WAGA and WGCL and WATL had not received copies of the ad, which is slated to run Wednesday morning. The ad will run largely during news broadcasts and in prime time, during such popular programs as “Dancing with the Stars,” “House” and NFL Sunday pre-game show.
The size of DSCC order is substantial. At $514,950, it is much larger than any weekly TV ad buy made by Martin since of the start of his campaign. The ad is scheduled to run 369 times by next week.
While this is not an enormous amount of money for the DSCC, it is a big start, especially considering the cash chasm between Chambliss and Martin. The DSCC finally seized on the race's tightening polls. Given the commitment here, I would guess that this will not be the last time the DSCC spends here. They have clearly committed resources towards winning this seat, and they will likely continue spending here.
All of this comes on the heels of another Survey USA poll of this race, which showed Chambliss leading 46-43. This result is nearly identical to a poll taken two weeks ago which found the contest at 46-44. We will not look through all of the cross-tabs again, except to make two notes. First, the big piece of information that seems to jump out is that whereas in the poll two weeks ago, Jim Martin was winning people who had already voted by 61-36, in this latest poll, Chambliss has closed this gap to just 48-44. If this is accurate, what it means is that the enthusiasm gap being enjoyed by Martin (as well as likely Obama) among the very first early voter has been mostly closed by more Republicans heading to the polls early. This is a very important number to watch, as it could well portend whether Martin wins in the end.
Second, the sample of black voters in the poll was 26 percent, slightly below the state's overall black population number of 29 percent. (The poll also over-sampled whites (relative to Georgia's overall population) by about three or four percent, while not interviewing enough Hispanic voters to add meaningful data to the conclusion (Hispancis make up five percent of the state population, a small number but still meaningful in what could be a tight contest)). All of this is important as we look at early voting in Georgia so far.
The Georgia Secretary of State has a tremendous web site up which posts some early voting statistics up to the day. I recommend you bookmark this page. As of yesterday, October 14, the SOS reported that 499,582 people have voted early. Of that number, 184,453 were black, or 36.9 percent. This much higher than the state's overall black population, a fact which bodes very well for both Jim Martin and Barack Obama. Furthermore, as Andrew Sullivan, Nate Silver, and assuredly others have pointed out, that nearly 500,000 early voter turnout as of yesterday has already surpassed all of the early voters combined who cast ballots in the 2004 general election.
Clearly, then, there has been a huge jump in voter enthusiasm, and if black voter turnout is any indication, that should benefit Democrats on the ballot. Of course, this does not mean that this same high level of turnout will come out on November 4. In other words, a lot of the most enthusiastic voters may be opting to vote early, and thus may dilute turnout somewhat on election day. Intuitively, this makes sense, as a lot of voters may wish to cast a ballot now in case they cannot vote on election day. This is likely common in a lot of urban areas. Still, even if this is true, there is no question that not only are more black voters turning out in Georgia this election, but also that voter enthusiasm in general is at all-time high. Given the composition of those voters up to this point, it is reasonable to infer they are Democratic voters. I would bet a coke that if you could count all the early votes, both Obama and Martin would be leading. All this could well be erased entirely on November 4, but if come November 3 McCain-Palin is down 10 points in all the national polls, we might see a drop in conservative voter enthusiasm, and in turn a dip in Republican turnout which crushes GOP candidates. Food for thought.
In terms of the latest SUSA poll, as we have been saying at several points this election cycle, many these polls are already undersampling black voters. If the SUSA poll had made blacks 29 instead of 26 percent of the sample, Martin would probably be about tied (sorry, I am too lazy to do the math right now to prove that). Naturally, black turnout could surpass 29 percent -- it is already is in early voting -- in which case, Martin and other Democratic candidates in similar situations like Ronnie Musgrove, would be leading. From that standpoint, it is important to put these polls in the proper context.
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