Sabato’s Crystal Ball moves Georgia governor race to ‘likely Republican’

Election handicapper Sabato’s Crystal Ball on Monday shifted its rating for Georgia’s gubernatorial race from “leans Republican” to “likely Republican,” suggesting Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is increasingly positioned to win his rematch against Democrat Stacey Abrams.

Georgia uses a runoff system — meaning that voters will cast ballots again in December if no candidate receives a majority — but Kemp in most recent surveys has polled in the low 50s, which would narrowly avoid a runoff, as he did against Abrams in 2018.

“Our thinking remains that the Senate race probably goes to a runoff, but we think it’s reasonable to make Kemp a clearer favorite in the gubernatorial contest,” wrote Sabato’s Crystal Ball associate editor J. Miles Coleman. “Georgia is going to Likely Republican.”

Coleman added that even if the gubernatorial race does go to a runoff, he would probably still favor Kemp to win on the December ballot.

Georgia has trended blue since Kemp’s election as governor, namely when President Biden narrowly won the Peach State in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate carried Georgia’s electoral votes since 1992.

Voters in 2020 also elected Democrats to both of Georgia’s Senate seats for the first time in years, and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) this year faces a fierce reelection battle against Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Polls have shown Warnock and Walker neck-and-neck in the state while indicating Kemp maintains a slight but significant lead over Abrams.

“Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has, perhaps, been the governor who has most overperformed our early election cycle expectations,” Coleman wrote. “When the Crystal Ball issued our first set of ratings for this cycle, back in March 2021, Kemp’s state had just flipped from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Likewise, the senator that he put into office, then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), was just defeated.”

But since then, Coleman said Kemp has emerged as a Republican “free” of the former president and also benefited from a political environment more favorable to the GOP compared to four years ago.

The sitting president’s party typically loses congressional seats in the midterms, and Kemp in 2018 eked out a win for Republicans even as Democrats nationwide made large gains in the House in a rebuke of Trump.

Now the political headwinds are reversed, as Biden faces low approval ratings bogged down by issues like inflation.

“Despite a national profile and brisk fundraising, former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams (D) has not quite been able to replicate the energy that underpinned her 2018 effort,” Coleman wrote. “To be fair to Abrams, some of the obstacles she faces in this rematch are structural: Kemp now has incumbency, and the national environment is simply redder now than it was four years ago.”