It should be expected that a Democrat who could not win her own state in a year the Republicans were not expected to do well would not have a snowball’s chance in a Georgia summer of winning a gubernatorial race in 2022. But it’s much tougher for incumbents, even in years their party is in power, to lose to candidates who are perceived as weak given past performance on the campaign trail.
Yet, a new poll out today shows that Stacey Abrams, who is polling eight points behind Governor Brian Kemp, can’t do any better than about 45 percent in the polls (today’s has her at 43.5 percent). Warnock has not been able to garner the same support. What’s worse for Warnock is that Herschel Walker hasn’t hit his ceiling yet.
Phillips Academy Poll indicates that Warnock has fallen from 50 percent at the start of July, while Walker continues to climb from recent polling.
Warnock has 64% support among Black voters, even though Walker and Warnock are both African American. Warnock has strong support from urban and low-income voters where he is leading by 23%, 16% and respectively. Walker is nearly 20% more popular among rural voters than Warnock. Georgia’s suburban voters, a key voting block in the 2020 election, favor Walker by 5.1%.
The Warnock campaign is flagged by that last sentence. The suburbs helped turn Georgia’s two Senate seats blue in 2020 and when coupled with a resurgence of the rural vote in Georgia, a lot of whom stayed home in the 2020 runoff, that could potentially mean that Walker is actually about 2-3 points higher than where he is polling currently.
Georgia’s Democratic Party has reached a limit that they cannot overcome, and this is only due to the political climate. The true Democratic voter segment is the 43 percent Warnock or Abrams have picked up. The true Republican voter section is also in the high to mid 40s. Warnock cannot distance himself from Biden enough and show that he’s for Georgia voters enough to pick up more independents right now. Walker, however, can benefit from the deteriorating position of the Democrats across the country, especially in a southern state like Georgia, and can pick up more independent voters without having to do a lot more than he’s doing right now.
Warnock won in an unusual year on a strange fluke. He can’t recreate those circumstances. He can win some independents back (there is still plenty of time for him to do so), but the national Democratic scene and the economy don’t offer him any assistance.
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