New polling shows that the gubernatorial and senatorial midterm contests in Georgia will likely be extremely close.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) will be facing off against Republican nominee and former NFL player Herschel Walker in the general election this November, while Democrat Stacey Abrams will be challenging incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a rematch of their controversial 2018 governor’s race.
In a recently published Fox News poll, conducted on July 22-26, all four candidates were within arm’s reach of winning in their respective races, with Warnock doing somewhat better in his reelection bid against Walker, and Abrams just slightly behind in her contest against Kemp.
According to the poll, Warnock has the support of 46 percent of Georgia voters, while Walker is backed by 42 percent of voters.
Notably, more people are excited about voting for the Democratic candidate for Senate than for the Republican challenger. Among those who say they support Walker, nearly half (48 percent) say that they’re doing so with some reservations, or mainly because they dislike Warnock. Just 51 percent say they’re “enthusiastically” supporting Walker, a considerably smaller number than the 60 percent of Warnock supporters who say that they’re enthusiastic about the candidate.
Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, Abrams received higher enthusiasm marks from her supporters than Kemp did. According to the poll, 76 percent of Abrams’s backers said that they “enthusiastically” support her, while just 58 percent of Kemp supporters said the same about him.
However, Abrams still has less support overall. When the poll’s respondents were asked who they would vote for in a head-to-head matchup between Abrams and Kemp, Kemp garnered 47 percent of the vote, while Abrams attained 44 percent.
Although Kemp is slightly ahead of Abrams, the 3-point difference between the two candidates is within the poll’s margin of error, which means that technically, the race is a statistical tie. Seven percent of voters are also undecided at this time.
The poll’s results line up with numerous other polls showing that Georgia’s midterm races will be tight. According to Real Clear Politics, which takes an aggregate of polling data and averages them together, Warnock leads Walker by 4.8 points in an average of most polls. In the governor’s race, Kemp leads Abrams by an average of 3.5 points.
Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac University poll published in late June suggests that the race will be even tighter. In that poll, Kemp and Abrams were tied, with both candidates garnering 48 percent of voters’ support. Warnock led Walker by 10 points in the poll, receiving 54 percent of support among the electorate versus 44 percent for the GOP challenger.
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