Wednesday, 27 April 2005

Mayor poll

Today’s Clarion-Ledger reports on a poll showing Frank Melton with a double-digit lead in the Democratic primary (scheduled for Tuesday) of the Jackson mayoral race.

Predicting these things is always messy, especially with Mississippi’s open primary laws and low turnout rates in primary elections, but a 13-point lead (well outside the 4.5 point margin of error) is quite impressive. Mind you, there’s a surprisingly big undecided pool out there—hence why Johnson’s camp is trying to hang the DINO label on Melton to solidify support among Democratic identifiers, not to mention the use of the “northeast Jackson” codeword for “whitey.”

Update: More commentary here and here. For what it's worth, the Mason-Dixon poll shows a somewhat wider margin than the exit poll we conducted in November (712 respondents who were actual voters from five precincts), but we didn't give an "undecided" option (or list any other potential candidates).