Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for June 27, 2014

NOTE: Early and advanced voting begins Monday, June 30th, for the Primary Runoff Elections being held on May 20th. Check with your local board of elections for dates, times, and locations.

On June 29, 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sailed from Cadiz, Spain to invade Florida.

Johan De Kalb was born on June 29, 1721 in Germany. In 1777, De Kalb joined the Marquis de Lafayette in supporting the Americans against British forces, dying in Camden, South Carolina in 1780. In 1822, the Georgia General Assembly created DeKalb County.

On June 28, 1742, Spanish forces based in Florida invaded Georgia.

On June 28, 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s second draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Click here for a comparison of the first, second, and final drafts of the Declaration.

On June 27, 1864, Sherman’s Union forces attacked General Johnston’s Confederates at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park is hosting a commemoration for the 150th Anniversary through Sunday.

One year later, the Military Department of Georgia was created to oversee Reconstruction in the state.

On June 28, 1887, John Pemberton patented Coca-Cola Syrup and Extract.

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914, sparking the First World War.

The Gone with the Wind scene that includes the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was filmed on June 27, 1939, along with an alternate that used the line, “Frankly, my dear, I just don’t care.”

The United States Supreme Court released its 5-4 opinion in Furman v. Georgia on June 29, 1972, holding that the death penalty violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

On this date in 1982, “Don’t You Want Me,” by the Human League was number two on the top forty. If you want to know how much of a geek I am, I spent that summer (I turned 11) at computer camp at Ohio State University, monkeying around with IBM PCs.

On June 29, 1993, Governor Zell Miller bought the first ticket in the Georgia Lottery.

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian Space Station Mir on June 29, 1995.

New Poll shows advantage Deal

A new poll by InsiderAdvantage for Fox 5 and Morris News shows Governor Deal with a 7-point lead over Democratic challenger Jason Carter.

The survey for Morris News and Fox 5 of Atlanta by InsiderAdvantage shows Deal leading 47 percent to Carter’s 40 percent and Hunt’s 3 percent. Ten percent of those questioned were undecided when reached by automated telephone or online Monday and Tuesday. The poll included 1,349 likely voters for a 2.7 percent margin of error.

Independent surveys released as recently as last month showed Carter in the lead, but that was before Deal’s campaign began attacking him and before the Republican Governors Association let loose multiple negative television ads. Carter was airing introductory spots that didn’t threaten the governor.

“Losing ground in the polls while running advertising is a very bad sign. The best Carter could likely hope for would be to keep Governor Deal under 50 percent (plus one vote), as required to win, and force him into a winter runoff,” said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery.

Towery notes that Carter will still have a tough time escaping association with the unpopular Obamacare. That’s been the focus of one of the first ads attacking him for supporting its provision to expand Medicaid in the state.

Towery’s poll showed just 41 percent of Georgians surveyed approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance while 58 percent disapprove. Only 1 percent had no opinion.

“Carter’s problems don’t end with a poor campaign strategy. Both he and Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Michelle Nunn, are saddled with an immensely unpopular Democratic President Obama as their party mate,” Towery said. “Nunn will have a greater difficulty distancing herself from Obama, given that the issues in her race are federal and relate directly to the president. However, Carter’s failure to take on Deal’s weaknesses straight out of the gate, combined with the unpopularity of the president, might spell doom for his effort, too.”

Perdue releases internal poll that shows him leading

David Perdue’s campaign released a poll yesterday that they claim shows Perdue leading in the Senate Primary Runoff.

Our most recent internal poll shows us with the lead over Congressman Kingston and David’s favorability and name recognition increasing.

David Perdue: 45%
Congressman Kingston: 44%

It should be noted that this is the first poll using updated voter data from the primary. It is also the first poll conducted since our campaign went back up on TV with our new ad.

Internal polls by a campaign will be released only if they’re favorable for that campaign, and this is no exception. Unfavorable news will be buried. The only issue I have with this poll is the way they asked the ballot question – the only question that really matters. According to the polling memo, they asked:

If the Republican primary election for United States Senate were held today, for whom would you vote…. David Perdue or Jack Kingston?

There are two right ways to ask the ballot question, and they didn’t use either. One way commonly used is to randomize the order of the candidates, in order to diminish the “ballot order effect.”

Students in introductory psychology classes learn a phenomenon known as primacy effect: our tendency to remember items at the top of a list better than those in the middle or near the bottom. Having read the first items, we pay less attention to those that come later either because we are bored or because we are processing the information we saw at the top of the list.

This effect was classically demonstrated by psychologist Solomon Asch in 1946 when he presented subjects with the same list of positive and negative adjectives describing a person, listing either the positive ones (intelligent, industrious, etc.) or the negative ones (envious, stubborn, etc.) first. When asked to rate the person, those who were given positive adjectives earlier in the list consistently rated the person higher than those who were given negative ones first.

This same effect applies during elections, as the order of candidates on ballots can favor those listed first. For example, statistical analysis of over 20 years of elections in California shows that the so-called “ballot order effect” may have changed the winner in up to 12% of the primaries in the state.

The effect is much more significant for non-partisan elections or for small local elections where voters know little about candidates and are not divided among party lines. The effect is less pronounced in large, well-advertised elections where voters are more likely to have selected a candidate before coming to the polls.

While the Senate runoff meets the criteria of “large, well-advertisied elections,” in which the ballot order effect is minimized, it may still be enough to bias a survey by one percentage point, which, in my mind makes the Perdue “lead” dubious.

The other “right” way to ask the ballot question, and my preferred method, is to list the candidates exactly in the order they will be on the ballot. Here’s how they’re listed:

[As an aside, you can visit the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page to see a sample ballot for your local elections.]

The reason for doing this is precisely to include the ballot order effect in the poll results; if we know it exists and can affect an election, I think we want it included in our polling.

This is why it’s important to see the form of the questions: because they asked the question incorrectly, I conclude that the “Perdue lead” probably doesn’t exist.

Speaker David Ralston under fire

The Georgia State Bar Association has asked for an investigation into Georgia House Speaker David Ralston’s handling of private clients at the same time he performs public duties as Speaker.

Investigators have asked the Supreme Court for a special master to look into allegations that Ralston violated several bar rules during an injury accident case he handled for several years.

State bar investigators [filed] a petition with the state Supreme Court Thursday, accusing Ralston of violating nine rules of professional conduct, including having a conflict of interest, not communicating, not expediting the case, and misusing funds.

State bar investigators said time after time, Ralston put his duties as speaker of the house above his clients, using what’s called legislative leave.

Ralston’s spokesman released a statement Thursday night saying the speaker “takes any charges about his professional conduct as an attorney very seriously. While he will continue to vigorously defend his professional reputation against these accusations of technical violations of State Bar rules, he will do so by continuing to fully cooperate with the investigation.”

While an investigation alleging conflicts of interest is likely as fun as a months-long colonscopy, I don’t believe this damages the Speaker’s standing within his chamber.

Loudermilk still under fire over military record

[In case I haven’t made this abundantly clear in the past, I have performed work for the Bob Barr Congress campaign for which I have been paid money. Make of it what you will.]

The Marietta Daily Journal writes that Barry Loudermilk’s depiction of his military service remains an issue dogging his Congressional campaign, as a small group of veterans continued questioning it yesterday.

For the second time in three days, a group of veterans led by retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Mrozinski met in downtown Smyrna to call Barry Loudermilk’s military record into question.
Mrozinski was joined by east Cobb’s Bill Stanley and Canton resident Scott McElroy, as the group went into detail about a record they say the candidate has exaggerated in speeches and forums.
“He has clearly stated things about himself that he is not,” Mrozinski said. “We are very disappointed.”

Statements from Loudermilk during forums include, “I’ll commit to you as someone who knows the importance of national defense. I’ve lived in that arena. I worked in that arena, and as an aviator — as a pilot — I know the value and the importance that our aerospace and our airpower has,” according to Stanley.
Loudermilk has also recalled class discussions about “aerospace engineering and flight physics” during his time in the Air Force.
Though Loudermilk has a pilot’s license today, Mrozinski and Stanley have said his statements strongly imply he was a pilot in the military. But, according to the group, Loudermilk was never a pilot in the Air Force. They also say his service records offer no indication Loudermilk ever enrolled in classes about aerospace engineering and flight physics.

Dan McLagan, spokesman for Loudermilk, said the accusations are an ineffective smear campaign.
“They’re drowning in a pool of their own blood,” McLagan said. “They’re getting slaughtered online. It’s brutal. They try to make an accusation when there’s no accusation. We released all the stuff they wanted.”