The Democrat whose already held the job is still the distant front-runner in the race for Georgia’s 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Georgia Democratic Primary voters shows former Governor Roy Barnes capturing 42% of the vote. This puts him 33 points ahead of his nearest competitor, State Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who has nine percent (9%) support.

Next is House Minority Leader Dubose Porter with seven percent (7%) of the likely Democratic primary vote. David Poythress, a former secretary of state in Georgia and unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1998, gets two percent (2%) support, with Carl Camon, the mayor of Ray City, in last place with one percent (1%).

Ten percent (10%) like some other candidate. Thirty percent (30%) are undecided.

The order of the candidates is unchanged from June. Barnes has dropped slightly from 48%, but none of the other candidates has picked up those votes. In fact, the biggest gain was in the category of some other candidate, which doubled from five percent (5%) in the previous survey.

John Oxendine, the state fire and insurance commissioner, continues to lead all other gubernatorial candidates among likely 2010 Republican Primary voters.

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Barnes served one term as governor before being defeated by Republican Sonny Perdue in 2002 and not surprisingly is the best-known of all the Democratic hopefuls. Just 17% of likely Democratic Primary voters don’t have an opinion of Barnes. The number who don’t know enough about the other candidates to comment on them range from 37% for Baker to 62% for Camon.

Thirty-three percent (33%) have a very favorable opinion of Barnes, while just six percent (6%) view him very unfavorably.

Baker is regarded very favorably by 14%, Porter by 9%, Camon by 3%, and Poythress 2%.

At this very early stage of the campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the very favorable and very unfavorable figures more significant than the overall favorability totals.

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