Rasmussen (8/21, likely voters incl. leaners, 7/28 in parens):
Ronnie Musgrove (D): 43 (43)
Roger Wicker (R-inc): 52 (52)
(MoE: ±4.5%)
Without leaners, Wicker leads by five: 47-42. The crosstabs show Wicker making some important gains over earlier polls: he now scores 17% of African-American voters (10% without leaners) and holds Musgrove to only 22% of the white vote. Even with a sky-high African-American turnout in November, that’s a winning formula for the GOP.
I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer here, but Musgrove has some serious challenges — most seriously, a recent guilty plea from a business executive who admitted that he attempted to bribe Musgrove with a $25,000 campaign contribution in connection to a failed beef plant project — an unsuccessful business venture that left Mississippi taxpayers carrying the tab in 2003.
Now, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing on Musgrove’s part, but this is clearly the type of smoke and mirrors game that the GOP will love to exploit. I’m not saying that this race is undoable, but it’s going to take an extraordinary amount of sweat.
SSP currently rates this race as Lean Republican.
The DSCC needs to get on the air in a major way if we are going to keep this as a tossup.
We can win here but it’s going to require heavy DSCC investment.
When’s Rasmussen going to take his foot out of his ass and start polling this without the party label?