A fresh InsiderAdvantage/ FOX 5 Atlanta poll that was released on Friday reveals Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) leading Trump endorsement-recipient Herschel Walker, the Republican challenging Warnock in his race for re-election.
Warnock had 48 percent of the support, while Walker had 45 percent. A third-party candidate — Libertarian Chase Oliver — got 3 percent in the poll, and 3 percent said they were undecided. One percent chose “other.” If no candidate surpasses 50 percent in the final results, then the race will have to proceed to a runoff election, in which the top two finishers compete against each other with nobody else on the ballot this time around. That’s what happened in the race for Georgia’s other Senate seat back in 2020, when incumbent Republican David Perdue led Democrat Jon Ossoff by a little under two percent in November only to later lose to Ossoff in the January runoff. (Warnock was also on the ballot twice, but the legal framework for that race was somewhat different.)
InsiderAdvantage, the pollster behind this data, appears to hold conservative ties. FiveThirtyEight, an elections data and analysis site, gives the pollster an overall rating of “B” and reports the pollster called 67 percent of races correctly among 140 surveys examined by the site. “The possibility that we could see a scenario where we’re living through 2020 all over again, particularly in the U.S. Senate race, which seems to be pretty tight, there is some room for decision there,” InsiderAdvantage Chairman Matt Towery said in tandem with the release of this poll data. “It could end up being a win straight out for one of the two candidates, but all of these races bear watching because of the shift in Georgia demographics.” The new Georgia polling data from InsiderAdvantage also showed Democratic gubernatorial contender Stacey Abrams losing to incumbent Republican Brian Kemp.
Quentin Fulks, who’s Warnock’s campaign manager, didn’t sound as though the campaign was interested in putting too much attention on polling data. “There are going to be polls in all directions over the course of this campaign. Here’s what we know: this race will be close, which is why we can’t take anything for granted and are working hard every day to reelect Reverend Warnock, so he can continue fighting in the Senate to protect and save jobs, lower costs for hardworking families and stand up for Georgia servicemembers and veterans,” Fulks said. As of Friday afternoon, the weighted average from FiveThirtyEight for polls in the Georgia Senate race put Warnock three percent ahead, although neither of the candidates were past 50 percent. Democratic chances of maintaining control of the Senate through the midterm elections are generally regarded as relatively good, and Decision Desk HQ — another elections data and analysis site — said Georgia “leaned” towards the Democrats as of this Friday.
