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![\"Georgia](\"https:\/\/prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/10\/GettyImages-1242023474-em-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGeorgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks to the press after Georgia\u2019s abortion ban was instated by a judge in Atlanta on July 20, 2022.<\/p>\n
\nPhoto: Nathan Posner\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images<\/p>\n
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\nThe election in<\/u> Georgia has begun.\u00a0Yesterday was the first day of early voting. More than 130,000 votes have been cast. Turnout is going to be high by historical standards for midterms here. But something is missing; the gubernatorial race seems a little off.<\/p>\n
Last night\u2019s debate between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and his Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams didn\u2019t light up social media the way the debate between Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Republican challenger Herschel Walker became a spectacle.<\/p>\n
Abrams argued for nuance when talking about crime policies. Kemp sidestepped questions on his intentions around abortion and contraception restrictions. The conversation was policy-heavy, without much for partisans to latch onto.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, an image from the Warnock-Walker trainwreck continues to circulate in Georgians\u2019 social media feeds four days later: Herschel Walker smiling like he ripped one in an elevator while holding up a fake sheriff\u2019s badge<\/a>, vacuously attempting to show his support for law enforcement<\/a>. Crime is apparently so out of control in Georgia that the Republican candidate impersonated a police officer live on television to prove the point.<\/p>\n Debates matter at the margins. But the margins are all anyone has in Georgia. Two years ago, then-Sen. David Perdue got served so hard by Jon Ossoff in a debate that Perdue noped out of a second course a few days later. Ossoff ended up arguing with an empty podium<\/a> for 90 minutes in front of the Atlanta Press Club, then beat Perdue by about half a percentage point in a runoff a month later.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is firing an incumbent and not an open seat,\u201d Abrams\u2019s campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo said of Kemp. \u201cWe have to give reasons for people to fire him. … He\u2019s got a very radical, far-right record that we will be pointing out and throwing out.\u201d<\/p>\n One wonders how we measure such things now. Standards for \u201cradical\u201d have shifted over the last four years. Kemp had to beat back Perdue\u2019s Trump-fueled payback challenge, which effectively positioned the governor to the left of the Republican insurrectionist wing. Compared to the Republican lieutenant governor candidate Burt Jones, who participated in a scheme to send false electors to Washington in an effort to subvert the presidential election in 2020, Kemp almost looks like a moderate.<\/p>\n \u201cInflation, jobs, the economy and cost of living are far and away the top issues,\u201d said Cody Hall, Kemp\u2019s campaign spokesperson. “I think that we have tried our best to remain focused on that. Sometimes campaigns get distracted, and sometimes lose focus on what the voters are telling us they want us to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kemp has consistently been ahead in polling, ranging from a scant point in the Quinnipiac poll from October 10 to 9 points in the Trafalgar Group poll released October 11. The FiveThirtyEight weighted average is 5.5 points.<\/p>\n Abrams\u2019s team takes issue with the weighting of most of these polls, arguing that they are under-sampling Latino and Asian voters, who have been growing in number and are disproportionately representative of swing voters.<\/p>\n Not that one can find many swing voters in Georgia, of course. The state\u2019s politics are largely calcified by race and geography<\/a>. Abrams can expect to win 90 percent of Black voters and lose 80 to 90 percent of rural white voters. A systemic sampling error consequential enough to swing the race is probably a stretch.<\/p>\n The gap between Abrams and Warnock in polling defines the limits of sharing a ticket in modern Georgia elections. Exactly one poll \u2014 sponsored by Walker himself \u2014 shows the challenger with a lead. The others generally show Warnock holding his Senate seat with a lead of\u00a02 to\u00a07 points. The FiveThirtyEight weighted average is 4\u00a0points.<\/p>\n Perhaps this is simply the advantage of incumbency, as well as the shocking weakness of Walker\u2019s candidacy. But the math of a 9-point gap suggests that roughly 1 in 22 voters will vote for the Warnock, a Democrat, and then Kemp, a Republican. Analysts say there are too few Abrams-Walker voters to consider.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Abrams-Kemp contest has been rooted in substantive policy questions about how to administer a budget surplus, Medicaid expansion for Georgia, changes to gun laws, and abortion rights over the last four years. \u201cWe\u2019ve been told that the quality of your citizenship depends on your geography. That based on the state that you live in, you may or may not have the protection to take care of your own body. Access to an abortion, if you’re below the Mason-Dixon Line, is nearly impossible,\u201d Abrams told NPR<\/a> a few days ago.<\/p>\n Little enough about the Senate campaign has been substantive. Walker\u2019s campaign surrogates flooded television and internet ad space with spots<\/a> trying to hold Georgia\u2019s junior senator responsible for a worldwide inflation problem. That has largely been met with ads discussing Walker\u2019s record of domestic violence<\/a>, a threat to have a shootout with police<\/a>, and misrepresentations about his work with veterans<\/a> and with police.<\/p>\n The abortion question in Georgia is the wild card. Georgia passed a six-week abortion ban that had been blocked in court before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned<\/a>\u00a0the constitutional right to abortion\u00a0this summer. The religious right is agitating for a nationwide ban and for Georgia to ban all abortions full stop. It is the starkest of political divides and the plainest contrast between Kemp and Abrams. The Democratic campaign has increasingly pressed the threat to women\u2019s bodily autonomy posed by an unchecked Republican legislature and governor as a rallying cry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n