Hillary Clinton has a lead in Georgia — and it’s not even that surprising

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/05/hillary-clinton-has-a-lead-in-georgia-and-its-not-even-that-surprising/

When Mary Landrieu lost her Senate runoff in December 2014, the once loyally Democratic Deep South turned bright Republican red, with no Democratic senator or governor in Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama or South Carolina, and with Republican majorities in each state's legislatures.

That pattern broke with the election of Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor of Louisiana, a race he won mostly because he was squaring off against David Vitter. When you can run an ad against your opponent featuring the line, "David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriotism" and not even be criticized for exaggeration, it's safe to say that your odds are good. Bel Edwards won by 12 points.

A bad candidate, in other words, can make even long-term trends unimportant. Which brings us to Georgia.

A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of the presidential race in that state puts Hillary Clinton in a slight lead over Donald Trump, 44 to 40. This is inside-the-margin-of-error stuff, mind you, but only barely. (It's also a break from the state of the race in the RealClearPolitics polling average, which gives Trump a four-point lead, though with only a handful of polls included.)

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