A new poll released Tuesday by Emerson College Polling shows Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) with a commanding lead in her 2024 run for re-election.
The poll was conducted among 410 Tennessee voters between October 1 and October 4 and found that Blackburn boasts support from 50 percent of respondents.
Only 25 percent of the respondents said they would vote for Blackburn’s main challenger, State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville).
Another 25 percent said they were undecided or planned to vote for someone else.
Environmentalist Marquita Bradshaw (pictured above, middle), who ran against Senator Bill Hagerty in 2020, is also running in the Democratic Party primary.
Quoting Spencer, the executive director of Emerson College Polling, the full report says the following:
Representative Johnson’s support is highest among Black Tennessee voters, at 56%, while 11% support Senator Blackburn among this group. Among white voters, 60% support Blackburn and 19% Johnson.
Blackburn holds the support of all educational demographics except for postgraduates, who are split: 46% support Johnson and 45% Blackburn.
Johnson (pictured above, right) is most noteworthy for her participation in a riot at the Tennessee Capitol in the wake of the March mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.
She narrowly avoided expulsion from the General Assembly while two of her colleagues, State Reps. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) were expelled.
Johnson has also compared Tennessee to North Korea.
“I feel like North Korea has more democracy than we do in the state of Tennessee, and it’s terrifying to me that we’re in this march to fascism,” she told Mother Jones in April. “And it seems like the Tennessee supermajority is leading the charge.”
“When my folks sent me here, they knew I was vocal, and they knew I would stand up and I would be their voice,” she said later in the interview. “And that’s why they sent me here. There’s no question about that. Everybody in the state knows that.”
The Emerson poll also asked questions that did not pertain to Blackburn’s reelection bid.
It found that Governor Bill Lee (R) has a 35 percent approval rating among those surveyed, while 25 percent disapprove of the job he is doing. Meanwhile, 41 percent of respondents said they were neutral on that issue.
Only 20 percent of those surveyed approve of President Joe Biden, while 61 percent said they disapprove of him.
In a hypothetical 2024 matchup between former President Donald Trump and Biden, 55 percent of survey respondents said they would vote for Trump, while only 22 percent said they would vote for Biden.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Marsha Blackburn. Photo “Gloria Johnson” by Gloria Johnson. Photo “Marquita Bradshaw” by Marquita Bradshaw.
