The race between Republican Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Jerri Green to become Tennessee’s next governor may be in the hands of a third person — independent candidate David Hatley.
A pair of new polls released on Tuesday offered different outlooks on the race. One by Republican-friendly pollster Spry Research shows Blackburn leading Green by 11.5 percentage points. The other, published by Green’s campaign but conducted by an unknown independent firm called Political Intelligence Polling, shows Green within two percentage points of Blackburn.
Both polls were conducted last week as early voting started, theoretically capturing the sentiment of likely voters statewide as they began to cast ballots.
The main difference between the two is how well Hatley, a conservative East Tennessee businessman running as an independent, performs, and, therefore, how much of Blackburn’s base he consumes. Hatley, a curveball candidate who could not run as a Republican because of his criminal record, which led to a lack of voting in party primaries, is outperforming the other dozen independents and doing unusually well for a third-party candidate.
In the poll shared by Green, she is actually polling two points lower than she was in September, when her campaign shared another independent poll. But the new poll, showing Blackburn at just shy of 36 percentage points and Green at a little more than 34 percentage points, suggests Green is in striking distance, despite her underdog status in a red state. The poll also shows Hatley around 19 percent, nearly doubling his 10-11 percent poll results from September.