Introduction
InsiderAdvantage has currently conducted a mix-mode poll that involved using online sample techniques and telephone to survey 804 registered voters in the state, through random selection. InsiderAdvantage released their results on 16th April, 2014, only affected by a marginal error of plus or minus 3.4%. Online participants were selected randomly for an identical poll. The polls concentrated on political affiliation, age and gender. When people were asked whom they would vote for as republican nominee for governor, the results were obtained as following. The nomination for governor was participated by Deal, Barge, and Pennington.
On the perspective of age, Deal seems to be strongly supported by the old people who are above 65 years, and who also represent the majority of the respondent interviewed. However, the age of people between 30 to 64 shows that they have no substantial support to Deal, since they scored the least percentage compared to other age groups. According to the race segment, the African American takes the lead to supporting Deal with 62.5 percent, followed by white with 61.3 percent. Among the 16 American African that responded, zero percent voted for Berge. On the gender point of view, men seem to have a stronger support toward Deal, more than the women. Thus, Deal needs to have a serious address on female votes and votes from voters aged between 30 and 64, so as strengthen his governorship candidature. It is obvious that the Democrat voters could show significant support to the republican supporters. However, Independence voters show a 60.4 percent support.
The following table shows the results of Georgia’s Republican nominee for senator polls
The results reveal that there is a tight race between five different Republicans candidates for his senator seat. According to the survey, only two candidates Grayson and Gardner are outliers since they are not anywhere near the top of the race. Perdue has the highest support with a small margin from his opponents. It is, therefore, clear that this is a tight race and can be highly volatile for the open primary elections. As the campaign progress, the voters’ preference might change to favor one of the five candidates. With almost a third of the respondents being on the “undecided” side, the results from the primary election might differ from the polls results. It will depend on the strategic campaign method that the five candidates will embrace. For instance, Perdue had been reportedly cashed his campaign with 1 million dollars. Some of the money had been invented on the TV ad that has shown a significant impact on his campaign.
On the age perceptive, the two leading primary candidates, Perdue and Kingston show their weak points. Perdue need to engage on a serious focus on the young adult who scored the lowest percentage during the polls. On the other hand, Kingston needs to convince more the voters aged between 30 to 44 years. Broun, Handel and Gingrey are also in a position to take the lead if they can enhance their campaign strategies and improve on their weak age groups. Perdue also seems to have convinced women that he is competent in the senator office. While Kingston is ahead of Perdue with about 1.5 percent from men, Perdue takes a lead of about 7.7 percent on women, against Kinston. From the race perspective, Handel seems to be a favorite for the American African voters. Therefore, he can take advantage of the 18 percent of the “undecided” voters to mobilize his votes. Thus, it can be observed that each of the five primary candidates can emerge a winner, making the nomination election a competitive and a five horse race.
References
Coombs, D. S. (2014). Last man standing: Media, framing, and the 2012 Republican primaries.
Real Clear Politics (2014, April). RealClearPolitics - Latest Polls. Retrieved April 19, 2014, from http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls
