New polling shows conflicting information about how close the governor’s race really is between Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Memphis City Councilmember Jerri Green.
The Republican-leaning Spry Research found Blackburn had a 12-point lead over Green, while a less established pollster, Political Intelligence, put the mainline party candidates within two points of each other.
As a firm, Political Intelligence has virtually no footprint outside of polling it conducted on behalf of Brandon Herrera, a Republican candidate for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District. A Canadian political firm by the same name denied conducting polling for Herrera when asked by FiftyPlusOne. A spokesperson for Green told WPLN News that a “trusted source” shared the polling with her campaign.
John Geer, co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll, said both surveys have some red flags, but their consistencies are worth noting. Both polls show conservative independent David Hatley doing better than expected with 12%-19% of the vote.
“He’s hitting some sort of chord, otherwise I don’t think (Blackburn would) be wasting the money attacking him,” Geer said.
As Hatley pulls more of the vote, both polls put Blackburn in the lead but still shy of a majority.
“If, in fact, it ends up that she gets under 50% of the vote, that’ll be a statement that she’s won, but it’s not the kind of mandate that she’d like,” Geer said. “That was the same thing she had in the primary, where three out of five Republican primary voters basically wanted somebody else.”
Early voting runs through Oct. 29. Election Day is Nov. 3.
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