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New data shows that Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, is currently raking in more fundraising dollars than incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R) for their impending electoral contest later this year.
By all measures, the race is set to be a close one. When Abrams and Kemp previously faced off in 2018, the latter won by a margin of 54,723 votes — or a difference of 1.5 percent of the electorate. Abrams contended that there were many improprieties in the election that led to her loss; notably, Kemp, who was constitutionally charged with managing the election as Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, refused to recuse himself from overseeing his own election.
Abrams has raised $9.2 million since she entered the race in December of last year, outraising Kemp by about 27 percent. Kemp has received around $7.2 million from donors since last December, reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.
Kemp is also facing a Republican primary opponent in former Sen. David Perdue, who announced that he would run for governor in December, nearly a year after losing his seat in the United States Senate to current Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia). Fundraising numbers for Perdue have not yet been released.
No matter who wins the Republican primary, the general election for governor will likely be close, just as it was four years ago.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll published last week, Kemp currently leads Abrams by a margin of two points (49 percent to 47 percent, respectively). That difference is within the poll’s margin of error, which means the two candidates are statistically tied.
If Abrams faces off against Perdue instead of Kemp, the race gets even tighter, with both candidates securing 48 percent of the vote, the poll shows.
Between Kemp and Perdue, it appears that the incumbent governor has a significant lead, according to the poll, with Kemp getting support from 43 percent of Republican-leaning voters while Perdue gets support from 36 percent.
However, an internal poll commissioned by Perdue’s campaign shows that Perdue leads Kemp in the race by 3 percent when all other primary candidates are excluded from consideration. Notably, the poll also asked voters which candidate they would choose if they knew Trump endorsed Perdue; that endorsement increased Perdue’s lead over Kemp with Republican respondents by 22 percent.
If that endorsement helps Perdue overcome Kemp in the primary, this might end up giving Abrams an advantage in the general election. Indeed, numbers from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey last month found that a Trump endorsement could have the opposite effect in Georgia’s upcoming general election, as 49 percent of voters overall said that they would be less likely to vote for a candidate backed by Trump, while only 20 percent of voters said that a Trump endorsement would increase their support of a candidate.
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