Don't Pop Those Corks Just Yet

The Fox 13 poll that was released last night offers up some good news for new leadership in Memphis, but don’t pop the champagne just yet folks. Election day is tomorrow and there’s still plenty of ground game left to throw the election one way or the other. I think the elder Harold may have done some of that tonight in his lack of appearance, but that’s really just a side note that makes me giggle on the inside. Let’s look at these numbers for real and take them apart the way they should be.

Here are the poll results breakdown. Unfortunately, they don’t tell us specific breakdowns of demographics like how many black women that make 40-60k are voting for whomever, or even the how many of what denomination were sampled. Still, it’s a dead heat and putting money on any one or the other is risky business.

The part that is most interesting to me is that 19% of respondents indicated something could affect their vote in the mayoral race. Of those respondents, Chumney had the softest support of the three main candidates, 43% though Morris is not far behind at 38%. This may be an indication of voter shift in the event of an inevitable Herenton win. Because the race is still fairly close, I believe it would take something pretty drastic to sway the majority of those voters making election night a long night for us political junkies.

Secondly, I find it interesting that Herenton has the highest percentage of voters that responded “something may come up”, when asked if they are certain they will vote, though the difference between him and Chumney is statistically insignificant (33% to 31%). Ground game will be key. Herenton has demonstrated in past elections an ability to GOTV, I’m not sure about the Chumney campaign. To be honest, there has been nothing spectacular about her campaign up to now. I won’t speculate as to why this is, though others have. Still, if she intends to win she had better bring some serious game to the table tomorrow.

Finally, something NOT about the poll that I just want to put out there. As this and other polls have shown, over 60% of the voters in Memphis want a change in leadership. Both Morris and Chumney fare well in head-to-head races against Herenton. Against Morris, Herenton picks up almost no support. Against Chumney he picks up a mere 5%. It would be unfortunate for the city to maintain the status quo due to this crappy math that a three-way race creates. If the voters of Memphis really want change they need to get off their asses in mass and make it so.

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