How 'Red' Will Georgia Be In Next Year's Presidential Race? Maybe Not As Red As Some Expect

(7/18/07) How “red” will Georgia be in next year’s presidential primary? Maybe not as red as conventional wisdom might suggest.

We asked this question of 1,081 registered voters during the period July 12-14, and weighted the survey for age, race and gender:

Q. Are you more likely to vote in next year’s Republican or Democratic Presidential primary in Georgia?

Here’s what they said:

Democrat: 39%
Republican 37%
No Opinion/Don’t Know: 24%

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

The big story in this survey is with voters who describe themselves as independent.

Independent voters who already had made a choice said they preferred the Democratic primary by a 25 percent to 20 percent margin. More importantly, however, while most Republicans and Democrats stated that they would vote in their own party’s primary, over 53 percent of independents said they were undecided.

“This means that independent voters, who have for the past few election cycles trended towards the GOP, are less decided as to which party they prefer,” said InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery.

“Independents make up a huge portion of the vote in Georgia and many other large Southern states. Whether this is a trend or not will only be established as we see these independent voters starting to choose a primary or simply decide to sit the primaries out.’