have any record to persuade voters on, Knoxville has lost hundreds of for profit jobs and businesses during the Haslam years, a fact not lost on the people who keep Mike Edwards in charge at the SuperChamber. The jobs lost will not be easily replaced. In my opinion, Edwards and the SuperChamber have demonstrated a complete incapability to recruit business and industry to Knoxville or Knox County. It will be interesting to see how much support Mike Edwards has from the Haslam political organization once Billy was safely lodged in the governor's mansion in Nashville. The Burchette regime will not have much tolerance for throwing money at spendthrifts and incompetent causes like the SuperChamber.

If Edwards runs for mayor of Knoxville, he's lost his support to remain at the SuperChamber.

Perhaps it's nitpicky, but I don't think you can count the 17% undecided as "opposed" to Haslam.

Rachel is right, so let's say that only 47% are opposed to Haslam with 17% undecided on him.

Happily, the same math also would indicate that 58% of Republicans are opposed to Wamp and 63% are opposed to Ramsey (a number almost equal to his name recognition come to think of it.)

This is clearly Basil's race to lose.

In all seriousness, I think the interesting data from the latest polls is centered around the "tea party" questioning.

Only 15% of the Republicans polled said they considered themselves members of the "tea party," but 65% of them say they support the "tea party movement" agenda. That 50 point spread between supporting the agenda (a fairly passive means of self-identification) and actually calling yourself a member (a far more proactive statement) seems significant to me. If it's like that in other states it probably explains why so-called tea party Republicans are able to get some spotlight time, but most haven't advanced to the winners podium since one might imagine that true blue members of the GOP aren't quite ready to flip the lever and make a full commitment to crazytown just yet.