Stacey Abrams Has Serious Ground To Make Up In Georgia Gov Race

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams trailed incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in a poll from Eastern Carolina University’s Center for Survey Research released Tuesday.

Abrams was 5 points behind Kemp in the poll, garnering 45% of the vote compared to Kemp’s 50%. The matchup will be a rematch between the two politicians, as Abrams lost to Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial race.

She fared worse than incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who tied with Republican Herschel Walker in the state’s Senate race, according to the poll. Both Warnock and Walker garnered 46% of respondents’ votes.

Abrams led Kemp with black respondents, holding an 86% to 9% advantage, but trailed with white respondents, holding a 27% to 70% disadvantage, according to the poll. Warnock garnered 83% of the poll’s black vote and 29% of its white vote.

Abrams is seen as more likely to lose than Warnock, due to the perception she is more liberal and her weakness with white voters, election analysts previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation

“Abrams under-runs Warnock in basically every single one of these suburbs and we see it in every single poll,” Lakshya Jain, an election analyst who writes for Split Ticket, told TheDCNF in May. “It has to do with the fact that he’s viewed as less extreme by the electorate less liberal … and the fact that … he’s not running against an incumbent, he is that.”

Walker, who easily won the GOP primary with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, is seen as a weaker candidate than Kemp, Jain told TheDCNF in May.

“He said a lot of crazy things. He’s basically been Trump’s number one lieutenant and Georgia didn’t even vote for Trump,” Jain said. “Herschel Walker is just a disaster of a candidate and national Republicans have been worrying about this for a long time.”

The poll surveyed 868 registered Georgia voters between June 6-9 and had a margin of error of 3.9%.

Representatives for Abrams, Kemp, Warnock and Walker did not immediately return TheDCNF’s request for comment.