As of midnight on Tuesday, there were few real shocks on Georgia’s primary day. Brian Kemp was renominated as Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate. Herschel Walker won a nomination to face incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock in November. Marjorie Taylor Green was not upset in her primary.
The actual results may not have been a surprise but the magnitude of victory for candidates like Kemp and Herschel may have been. Many recent polls had Kemp in the low 50s, enough to win without a runoff but very few of them predicted the 73-22 absolute shellacking that David Perdue took on Tuesday. Kemp has seemed to deliver on Republican primary voters demands over the past four years and they rewarded him for it. Perdue ran a largely one-note campaign about the 2020 election and it was nowhere near enough to challenge the popular Kemp.
Herschel similarly had no problem with his challengers in an open senate primary. Gary Black has been elected statewide multiple times as agriculture commissioner but it was not enough to overcome the sky high name recognition of the Georgia football legend. Herschel won it…running away, with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
An actual surprise result may have been the fact that Secretary of State Brad Raffesperger won more than 50 percent and will not have to proceed to a runoff. Raffensperger largely ignored the noise of the other candidates and was able to pull off what many had predicted a year ago would be impossible. Something that has been mentioned by pundits but may not be getting enough attention is Republican voters are still very committed to Donald Trump but there may be some resentment about losing two senate seats in the runoffs – at least enough to not hold it against Raffensperger or Kemp. Many feel that Trump’s lack of support for getting out the vote in that runoff election paved the way for Ossoff and Warnock to win.
There were a few races that had seen very little public polling that might have been a surprise. Former Atlanta city councilman and brief congressman Kwanza Hall cruised to a runoff against former Attorney General candidate Charlie Bailey for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor. There had basically been zero polling and very little ad spending on the race. The two most known names won, with Hall getting approximately 30 percent against Bailey’s 18 percent. Many people wondered why someone would run for Congress to fill John Lewis’ seat for a month like Hall did. We may have our answer now.
Additionally, for Democrat candidates in down ballot races, being known in Atlanta is a huge lift as this is where most Democrat primary voters are from. Of the 600,000ish votes that were cast in the Democratic primary, approximately 90,000 of them were in Fulton County alone, with DeKalb County contributing another 70,000. If Democrats hope to win statewide again in November like they did in 2020, they will have to break at least a little into the overwhelming Republican majorities in rural counties, despite very few of their successful candidates having much name recognition or experience there.
