President Trump and Joe Biden are in a statistical tie in the once heavily Republican bastion of Georgia, according to a poll commissioned by the state’s GOP.
Trump attracts 45.1% support to Biden’s 44%, separated by roughly a single percentage point, Cygnal pollsters found in the survey released Friday. An additional 4.5% of voters are undecided, while 6.5% would cast a ballot for a third-party candidate.
The research also bore bad news for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is under fire for his slow response to the coronavirus pandemic and his decision to ease stay-at-home restrictions even though Georgia is still reporting new COVID-19 cases. A majority of Georgians disapprove of how both Trump and Kemp are handling the crisis, but Kemp isn’t up for reelection until 2022.
Aside from the presidential contest, Georgia voters will decide two Senate races in November’s elections as well.
Doug Collins, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republican who had a pivotal role during Trump’s impeachment, has a double-digit advantage on nearest rival Democrat Matt Lieberman in the jungle primary special election for one of the seats, 29.4% to 12%, although 31.4% remain undecided.
Incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, appointed to the position by Kemp after Johnny Isakson’s resignation, trails at 10.5% as she fights off scrutiny over stock transactions she and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, made following a private briefing Loeffler received on the COVID-19 outbreak. Sprecher is the New York Stock Exchange’s chairman.
The poll found Georgia’s other sitting senator, Republican David Perdue, in a more comfortable matchup against Democratic contender Jon Ossoff in the regularly scheduled race. Perdue leads Ossoff, who unsuccessfully ran in 2017 for a House seat, 45.3% to 39.4%, but respondents weren’t asked about Perdue’s other challengers, and 11.8% were undecided.
Cygnal, a Republican-aligned political polling and research firm, surveyed 591 likely Georgia voters between Saturday and Monday for the study. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
