MEMORANDUM

To: Black Campaign Leadership

From: Wes Anderson and Brad Todd
Date: Friday, May 18, 2018
Re: Results from our primary survey completed May 17, 2018

We just completed our monthly statewide primary survey and found continued positive momentum for
Diane Black in the Republican race for Governor. Her ballot position now sits at its highest point of any
of the surveys OnMessage Inc. has taken in this race. With 76 days remaining in the contest, Diane has
widened her lead over Randy Boyd to a commanding margin of 41% to 28%, with 9% for Bill Lee and 8%
for Beth Harwell.

This 600-sample survey’s result closely conforms to the results of the topline result found by Grassroots
Targeting in its most recent targeting survey instrument, which calculated a 41%-26% race between the
top two contenders.

The most encouraging aspect of this survey research is its continuation of a trend we saw in our survey
completed exactly one month ago on April 17. Diane continues to consolidate the conservative core of
the state’s primary electorate behind her candidacy while Randy Boyd has become clearly defined as the
choice of the left-most quarter of the party. In mid-April, Diane held a 33% to 30% advantage over Boyd.
Since then his ballot share has remained stagnant and she has grown to a lead well outside this survey’s
statistical margin of error.

Bill Lee and Beth Harwell continue to struggle to find traction in this race, even in their home regions.
Together, they combine to account for just 17% of the vote, a figure identical to their combined share in
our January survey and only one point different from what we found in April.

Diane’s ballot strength come from a commanding 17-point advantage among voters who consider
themselves “very conservative” and a 17-point advantage among voters who consider themselves
“somewhat conservative.” Boyd leads among moderates/liberals by 7 points – a gap that exists for the
same reason he struggles among conservative voters. Black now breaks 60% on image among
conservatives while Boyd’s image is better than hers among the small fraction of the electorate that
identifies as “moderate.”

Diane continues to have the geographic advantage in this race, winning Middle Tennessee with a strong
51% majority. Boyd is barely ahead of Lee in that Grand Division, pulling 17% to Lee’s 14%. East
Tennessee is a statistical tie, with Boyd at 36% and Black at 35%; Black leads narrowly in West
Tennessee by a margin of 34%-30%.

Both candidates have recently run television ads on the issue of illegal immigration and Black appears to
have gotten the better end of the exchange, leading by a margin of 45% to 26% among voters who rate
that as the most important issue.

With all candidates well-funded, this race has more twists and turns ahead, but with only 15% of voters
undecided, we can now begin to see Diane’s path to victory emerge from the data.

METHODOLOGY
This survey was conducted by OnMessage Inc. in Tennessee. Telephone interviews were conducted on May
14-17, 2018. This survey consists of 600 likely GOP primary voters with a 33 primary voter oversample in
the Chattanooga media market to bring its cell up to 100 respondents. This survey was stratified by county
to reflect historic voter trends and the margin of error is +/-4.00%.

ABOUT US
Wes Anderson is a leading GOP pollster with 25 years of experience in opinion research. As a founding partner,
Wes now leads the polling divisions of OnMessage Inc. and OnMessage Sports, providing political and
corporate clients with a full spectrum of quantitative and qualitative opinion research products. You can read
more about Wes Anderson at onmessageinc.com.