Tipsheet

Surge: Handel Takes Narrowest of Leads in Final GA-06 Polling, Race Extremely Close

In late May and early June, two surveys of Georgia's special Congressional runoff election showed liberal Jon Ossoff opening up a seven-point lead over conservative Karen Handel.  Those were outliers, Republicans insisted; the race was much closer.  Sure enough, four of the next five public polls showed Ossoff ahead by three points, three points, one point and two points, respectively.  The other showed an exact tie.  Then a pair of election eve surveys dropped yesterday.  The first produced a 49-49 tie, with Handel gaining momentum (she was down two in the last WSB poll):


The next?  Handel's first lead in any public poll since the first week of May:


It's going to be awfully close, folks:  


If you live in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District, you have until 7pm to go vote.  Someone who cannot do so in this election is Jon Ossoff, the Democrat running for the seat.  As has been well established, he doesn't live in the district -- although his campaign has instructed volunteers to tell skeptical voters that he resides "three blocks" away; he's repeatedly said that he lives just "down the street."  Is that true?  The Washington Free Beacon's Brent Scher traveled on foot from Ossoff's home to the border of GA-06 and documented the process on video.  It took him two hours to walk from point A to point B, which Team Ossoff claims is a journey "down the street" of "three blocks."  Nope:


A (mostly) as-the-crow-flies hike is more than three miles, and the drive is more than six miles:


In retaliation for exposing Ossoff's residency spin as disingenuous and misleading, Scher was barred from covering an Ossoff event last evening:


Inside the rally from which an inconvenient reporter was thrown out, supporters chanted "this is what democracy looks like." Ossoff may have a strong following among urban hipsters, but even for them, that's laying on the irony pretty thick.  Though a conservative journalist was not permitted inside the event, no word on whether any Ossoff's fellow non GA-06 resident donors were welcome.  One would imagine they would be; after all, less than four percent of all Ossoff donations came from within the state of Georgia.  As we highlighted yesterday, these numbers are pretty stark:


Overall, Ossoff has out-spent Handel by a hefty margin, with outside groups joining the fray with millions in ad spending.  The supposed "anti-money-in-politics" party is awash in cash, as is so often the case:


I'll leave you with this testy exchange between Handel and the same liberal reporter who was assaulted by Republican Greg Gianforte in Montana last month.