As we reported Wednesday, the tension is rising in Georgia Democratic circles as the gubernatorial campaign of failed 2018 nominee Stacey Abrams has failed to gain traction in the nine months since she declared her candidacy. Since that time, she’s been demonizing her opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, and other Republicans as regressive types who want to set minority voters including women and black people back decades.
But her tactics seem to be backfiring, as poll after poll has shown her trailing Kemp by comfortable margins for Kemp. And the most recent one, released Thursday, shows Abrams down by eight, the biggest margin between the two to date in this race:
“Kemp leads in every age group in the survey. He receives right at 10% of African American support and a rather astounding 68% of white voters surveyed. Abrams has an impressive 54% of female voters while Kemp receives 63% from men,” explained InsiderAdvantage Chairman Matt Towery. “Kemp has support from 50% of independents. With two months to go, Kemp would seem poised to potentially escape Georgia’s General Election runoff requirement.”
In the previous Fox 5/Insider Advantage poll on the gubernatorial race, taken in late July, Kemp was up by five.
As also shown above, Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker is polling ahead of incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock by three points, after trailing Warnock by three in that same July Fox 5 poll. This is further proof of a clear momentum shift for Walker after several summer polls taken showed Warnock with the advantage, including one that had him up by ten.
Some of what’s happening here in both races, I think, is that Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is not as popular as Democrats want people to think it is. In fact, there are strong indicators that Biden’s plan has seriously angered middle-class voters who now know they’ll be on the hook in paying for the debts willingly incurred by others, many of who don’t actually need the help.
Further, in Abrams’ case at least, she has become an albatross for Democrats considering how she’s maintained the Big Lie that she didn’t actually lose the 2018 gubernatorial race. Democrats have become such election-year absolutists on questioning elections and refusing to accept the results, her history has come back to bite her — and them — as Republicans seek to call them out for their hypocrisy.
Georgians also likely remember that she helped sabotage her state at the time the election reforms bill was being debated and then was signed into law by Kemp. As a result of Abrams’ (and Warnock’s) demonization of the state, Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star game out of Georgia and along with it the millions in revenue that would have helped small business owners who were struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
Both Abrams and Warnock have been nothing but bad news for Georgia. And in Warnock’s case, he actually acknowledged in so many words in a campaign ad released in April that he hasn’t done anything in the Senate to write home about. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just about as close as you’ll come to getting a candidate for public office to admit they’ve been a failure at what they were elected to do.
Between this poll and other recent ones on battleground Senate races, things are looking up for GOP candidates, with the prospect of Republicans winning back the Senate looking good. We’ve still got two months to go and anything can happen, but as long as Republicans keep their feet on the gas and keep pounding home how bad Biden has been for the country on the economy and inflation, their chances of coming out on top come November will get even better.
As for the Kemp/Abrams battle, outside of a big debate moment or some shocking October surprise, he’s still clearly in the driver’s seat. That said, Kemp, too, needs to keep the pedal to the medal because as we’ve seen before, Abrams should not be underestimated in what she’ll try to do to pull out a win.
Flashback: Stacey Abrams Does an Appalling ‘Believe All Women’ Flip Flop in Her Desperate Quest for the VP Nod