A round of new polls shows Democrats in three high profile Southern Senate races in surprisingly good shape.
The polls, from NBC News and Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, show the Democrats in Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky either leading their expected Republican opponents or running essentially neck-and-neck with them.
In Arkansas, the NBC-Marist poll found Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) leading Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) 51 percent to 40 percent. That’s the third poll in the last month or so to show Pryor with a double-digit lead.
In Georgia, against each possible Republican challenger surveyed, Democrat Michelle Nunn either narrowly trails or leads by a small margin according to the NBC-Marist poll:
• Versus Rep. Paul Broun, Nunn gets 42 percent while Broun gets 43 percent.
• Versus Rep. Jack Kingston, Nunn and Kingston each get 43 percent.
• Versus Rep. Gingrey, the poll found Nunn getting 44 percent and Gingrey getting 42 percent.
• Versus former Secretary of State Karen Handel, Nunn leads 42 percent to 39 percent.
• The best showing for Republicans, the poll found, is a matchup between David Perdue and Nunn. In that scenario Perdue leads 45 percent to 41 percent.
The Journal-Constitution poll had somewhat better results for Nunn. Here are that poll’s findings:
• Versus Handel, Nunn leads 49 percent to 41 percent.
• Versus Kingston, Nunn leads 50 percent to 40 percent.
• Versus Perdue, Nunn leads 46 percent to 45 percent.
• Versus Broun, Nunn gets 51 percent while Broun gets 38 percent.
• Versus Gingrey, Nunn gets 52 percent while Gingrey gets 37 percent.
Lastly, in Kentucky, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-KY) trails Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by one percentage point, with McConnell getting 46 percent and Grimes getting 45 percent, according to the NBC News-Marist poll.
Read more about the NBC-Marist poll here. Read more about the Journal-Constitution poll released Saturday here.
This story was updated.
No time for complacency.
Crush the Republicans. Beat them so badly that they’ll be demoralized and unwilling to challenge any further.
That’s what I want to see from them.
Not to state the obvious, but we must turn out the vote. We really need to impress upon the youth and minorities that this is not the election to sit out, no election is, but certainly not this one.
Landrieu and Hagan are running well too.
Chuckie Todd et al always seem to pick Pryor as THE most endangered Democrat, but these polls don’t bear that out. Or perhaps he was just The Most Endangered Democrat Du Jour.
Get. Out. The. Vote.
Take no prisoners. It’s not kool to not vote–and it certainly is silly and mind-boggling that an educated population can have the means (voting) with which to change their situation for the better, and refuse to believe it and act on it. Does anyone believe that Herbert Hoover would have made a better President than FDR?
I would also suggest that the usual angst-ridden, hand-wringing mojo of the Democrats is going to have to change. We need some momentum-inducing narratives, some swagger and some fighting spirit. In that regard, by two favourite figures currently are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Fighters.