Both voter preferences and polls can be highly volatile for open primary elections – Primary pre-election polls don’t come with that warning label, but they probably should. Open primaries typically feature a big slate of initially obscure candidates, and voters are not locked into their preferences by the party affiliation the way they are in general elections. Their preferences can shift rapidly as the campaign progresses.
Meanwhile, primary elections typically produce low turnouts. In Georgia, the votes cast in the last two competitive statewide GOP primaries in 2010 and 2004 produced turnouts of just 11 percent of eligible adults (or 14 to 18 percent of all active registered voters). The tools that many public pollsters use to select “likely voters” — self-reported intent to vote or past participation — typically overstate the size of the likely electorate. Some use official lists of registered voters and past voting history to get a more accurate sample, but those techniques can impose other tradeoffs. Ultimately, seemingly obscure variation in the methods pollsters use to get to the likely electorate can make for big differences in the results. [Turnout via Georgia Sec. of State, ElectProject]
SurveyUSA result could indicate a Perdue surge, or could be an outlier –
So the advertising may be helping Perdue, or SurveyUSA may be capturing the likely electorate differently that than the other pollsters. We will know more as others track the race in the coming weeks.
via HUFFPOLLSTER: Poll Finds A New Leader In Georgia GOP Senate Battle.
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