GA (JMC Analytics) - Ossoff +7, Warnock +9

[Adam Griffin]

does anyone have any theories as to WHY this particular poll, assuming it is off, is off? bad sampling/weighting?

Almost everything in the poll looks sound, but the one big throw-off factor I noticed is that it shows Democrats winning one-third of the white vote in Central/South GA. That's identical with the statewide white vote totals: will never happen. Democrats will be lucky to get 15-20% of the white vote from the southern half of the state. Once you adjust for that, you're in a more reasonable 3-4 point range.

Both Democrats are garnering the support of one third of white respondents – Jon Ossoff is getting 40% of the white vote in Cobb and Gwinnett Counties (43% support Warnock), while in the “core counties” of Clayton, DeKalb, and Fulton, both Ossoff and Warnock are getting 55% of the white vote. Even in the central and south Georgia media markets, 33% of white voters are supporting Warnock while 36% are supporting Ossoff.

[Adam Griffin]

Also the respondents were 55% female and 45% male. Is the gender gap expected to be that big?

That's pretty typical in the South as black men have terrible turnout, but black women actually have great turnout compared to white women (whereas there's not much difference in turnout between white men and white women, or among other ethnic groups more generally, so the largest gender gaps tend to be in areas with large black populations, i.e., the South). It's of course even more pronounced in Democratic primaries, where the electorate in some Southern states can be as much as 65% female.

More specifically, black population =/= black eligibility. Throughout most of the Deep South, you have 1 in 4 black men ineligible to vote due to the machinations of the criminal justice system (the number is closer to 1 in 10 for black women). There are also plenty of "prison counties" where the bulk of black population is actually inmates.

This is why the average black electorate in many predominantly-black counties is 60-62% female (and of course why the overall electorate in Georgia is often 55% female).