A new poll shows that if the election to replace retiring Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss were held today, a Democrat could very well come out on top. WSB’s political analyst, Bill Crane, called it a wake-up call for the state’s increasingly conservative GOP.

The new poll by Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina firm, found Michelle Nunn, who wants to follow in her father’s footstep as a Democratic US Senator, is tied with or ahead of the five declared Republican candidates.

Crane said this should be taken as a warning cry about Georgia Republicans’ positions on social issues like immigration, abortion and gay marriage.

• Click here to see the poll results

“The GOP has been viewed – particularly in Georgia – as increasingly moving to the right and to some extent, painting itself into a corner,” Crane told WSB’s Pete Combs.

The poll by no means indicates the race is over. Nunn herself faces a primary election, as do the five Republicans currently in the race. But Democrat Nunn’s ability to draw strong numbers away from the GOP crowd “is sort of like getting a very, very early hurricane warning,” Crane said.