Just days before Tuesday's runoff, Karen Handel holds a slight edge over Nathan Deal in the GOP race for governor, according to a new statewide poll conducted for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership.Handel leads Deal 47 percent to 42 percent with 11 percent undecided, and the two are battling for downstate voters who supported someone else in the July 20 primary.
The race for the Republican nomination has been a bruising campaign that has garnered national attention through high-profile endorsements from GOP stalwarts such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is supporting Handel, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who endorsed Deal.
It all ends Tuesday, as GOP voters pick a candidate to face Democratic nominee Roy Barnes in November.
While Handel leads overall, the poll found that Deal gets nearly a majority -- 48 percent -- of support from voters who backed a losing candidate in the primary. Those voters, who backed former state Sen. Eric Johnson, state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine or one of the three other candidates in the primary, could be the key to Tuesday's vote, said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the poll.
"Deal really needs to get those Oxendine voters back and the Johnson voters back to the polls and convince them to vote for him," Coker said.
The question is whether those voters are motivated enough to make another trip to the polls. Coker said he would expect fewer than half of all primary voters to return Tuesday and those who supported Handel or Deal are the most likely to vote again.
In the primary, Handel led with 34 percent of the vote, followed by Deal with 23 percent. Johnson took 20 percent and Oxendine, 17 percent.
The poll shows Handel, the former secretary of state, dominating her home base of metro Atlanta, while Deal did especially well in North Georgia, much of which he represented in Congress for 18 years. But Johnson and Oxendine had their best showing in South Georgia, making voters from that region a key for Tuesday's runoff.
"That belt running from Augusta to Savannah and all the way to Columbus and through Macon -- that's where the race is going to be decided," Coker said.