Hmmm. Nate Silver says of the Georgia Senate race:
Rasmussen’s most recent poll, which had Saxby Chambliss up by two, shows that 12 percent of black voters are undecided in the senate race. Were those voters to split 4:1 to Jim Martin, that would be worth a net of around 2 points to him, making the race a tie. SurveyUSA, likewise, shows a higher rate of undecideds among black voters (7%) than among whites (3%).
Related thought: it’s very difficult to imagine what a Chambliss-Obama voter looks like. It’s pretty easy to imagine what a McCain-Martin voter looks like. So if the Georgia polls have Obama down by 4 or 5 points, but Martin down by 2 or 3 points (as they do), something doesn’t quite seem right; I’d think the gap should be a bit wider.
Basically, I think this race is a true toss-up rather than a Lean R. African-American voters might be unfamiliar with Jim Martin, who didn’t become the nominee until August, but the ‘D’ beside his name is worth a lot.
Same dynamics may hold to some extent in Roger Wicker’s seat in Mississippi, although Wicker is definitely the favorite in that race.
Because I suspect that black voters in the Old South are especially likely to mean “none of your business” when telling pollsters they’re “undecided,” I don’t think Nate’s guess of an eventual 4:1 preference for Martin among them sounds at all unreasonable. Now to see whether that applies in Mississippi as well.
