Rasmussen (7/28, likely voters incl. leaners, 6/24 in parens):
Ronnie Musgrove (D): 43 (47)
Roger Wicker (R-inc): 52 (48)
(MoE: ±4%)
Without leaners, Wicker’s lead shrinks to six: 48-42. So what’s changed since last time? It’s hard to say that anything major happened, unless perhaps Wicker’s many ads are starting to sink in. That said, the DSCC has begun airing ads on Musgrove’s behalf in recent weeks.
More interesting are the racial breakdowns of the poll, which Rasmussen is including in its crosstabs for the first time: Wicker leads Musgrove by 70-21 among whites, but trails Musgrove by 83-3 (yes, three) among African-Americans. Unfortunately, we still don’t know how Rasmussen is weighting their sample make-up.
While the poll shows Musgrove down from his past strength among white voters (which was around 26% in the most recent R2K poll of this race), Wicker’s extremely low performance among black voters has got to be a serious concern if he hopes to manage a spike in turnout among such voters in November, with Barack Obama on the top of the ticket.
SSP currently rates this race as Lean Republican.
The AA vote. Also, there is a higher % of AA undecides than whites in the poll. If those undecides break as expected it’s good news for Musgrove.
Hopefully this is an outlier. I was really hoping this seat would be a prime pick up…
Based on a breakdown of the white/black voting percentages I’m coming out to roughly a 66% white/34% black breakdown in the sample. I believe that 34% would probably be undercutting likely turnout of AA’s this fall.
But WTF? This race had been in a total dead heat, and now this tool Wicker gets a 9 point lead and 50%? What gives?
Hopefully Musgrove can keep some 90%+ of the black vote in MS and at least get 25-30% of the white vote.
I was really hoping this to be a sequel (Senate version) of the MS-01 special election back in May.
Hey y’all, if you want to take a look at some speeches that Musgrove and Wicker gave on July 30, I posted a diary a few minutes ago. It’s worth the time to watch. Wicker is a moron. You can hear the hecklers yelling at Musgrove during his speech. Pretty childish if you ask me. Musgrove held is own so don’t worry.