To the surprise of no one (via the AP): Georgia Sen. Chambliss wins re-election in runoff
With 70 percent of the precincts reporting, Chambliss captured 60 percent to Martin’s 40 percent.Sphere: Related Content
Filed under: 2008 Campaign, US Politics | |
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December 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
The interesting thing is the spread, 20 points in the runoff, 2 in the general election.
I wonder what accounts for such a huge gap; it’s been my experience watching local politics here that when things are close in the general election, they’re usually also close in the runoff, if there is one.
If I could, I would say “in your face” to Rasmussen and the rest of the pollsters, who had Chambliss ahead by just 4 points yesterday; I’d like to know how they arrived at those numbers. Obviously they were polling the wrong people or their weighting was wrong or something, which goes to show that they can and do get things collossally wrong once in a while.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 am
There was a pretty massive turnout differential, which one would expect. I didn’t even pay attention to the polls, as given Chambliss’ margin in the first round, the odds that Martin could make up the difference and overtake Chambliss was quite small. Further, turnout for run-offs in the US is typically low, and there was to be no Democratic surge given that Obama was not on the ballot.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 am
And, as far as polling in concerned, it is more difficult to figure out who a likely voter would be in a situation like this, and hence the accuracy issue.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Even in the general election, Martin ran more than 100,000 votes behind Obama, whose own performance was quite an achievement resulting from high Democratic turnout.
Despite the 100,000 vote gap between Obama and Martin, their percentages were about the same in Nov. 4. In other words, there was less interest in the Senate race, even a month ago. No surprise there. There was even less interest in the runoff. Even less surprise there.