Although Democrat Michelle Nunn has campaigned for Georgia's open U.S. Senate seat against Republican David Perdue by presenting herself as detached from partisanship, the approach appears not to be working going by Sunday's NBC News-Marist poll, which gave Perdue a 48 to 44 percent lead, the
Washington Examiner reported.
Democrats had looked to a Nunn victory as helping the party to retain the Senate in the face of prevailing forecasts of a big GOP win on Tuesday.
Nunn had been leading Perdue in most polls going into October. The prospect of the open Republican seat — being vacated by Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss — falling to Nunn enticed national Democrats to throw money into the race, the Examiner reported.
Since mid-October, however, the polls have gone mostly in Perdue's favor.
The
RealClearPolitics average shows Perdue on the ascendant with a 2.2 percentage point lead and in reach of the 50 percent total he'll need to avoid a runoff in January.
Sunday's final debate illustrated Nunn's predicament. Perdue repeatedly tied her to President Barack Obama's agenda while Nunn boasted of her bipartisan history in the not-for-profit sector, including work she did for president George H.W. Bush's Points of Light organization.
Perdue accentuated his business acumen, and his support for tax reform and reducing government regulation as a way to create jobs. Nunn said that Perdue had outsourced American jobs. She spoke more generally about "putting our country first, above party and above partisan divides and actually getting things done," the Examiner reported.
She said that she had "spent about 45 minutes of my life with President Obama" while she had "spent seven years working for" Bush. Perdue's comeback was that Bush has not endorsed her and in fact backs him, the Examiner reported.
Nunn could not say whether she would have voted for the Affordable Care Act. "I have said many times that I wasn't there."
She added that she wished there had been more bipartisanship in addressing healthcare and said she would work to fix the problems of Obamacare.
While Perdue was focused and on-message emphasizing jobs, "Nunn was all over the place," the Examiner said.
Libertarian Amanda Swafford, who also participated in the debate, is pulling about 3 percent of the vote, according to RealClearPolitics.
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