The Georgia governor’s race is a toss-up with 46 days to go

The race for Georgia’s governorship is close enough to make both campaigns nervous. And right now, the sharpest line of attack has nothing to do with policy.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former 60th mayor of Atlanta and the Democratic candidate for governor, wants six statewide debates with Republican Rick Jackson before November 3. Jackson, a billionaire businessman who won the Republican nomination through a runoff, has agreed to one town-hall-style debate. He skipped a candidate forum in Macon. His explanation, offered at a campaign stop, was straightforward: “My focus is talking to the people that matter the most, and that’s the Georgians, and that’s what I’m doing.”

A Toss-Up With Real Stakes

Independent election forecasters rate this race a toss-up, and the polling bears that out — messily.

A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,019 likely Georgia voters, conducted by telephone and online, shows Jackson leading 48% to 45%, with 7% undecided. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, which means the race is, statistically, a coin flip. A poll average from FiftyPlusOne, published September 17, showed Bottoms ahead by 3 points. Other recent polls had also shown her with a slight edge.

The two campaigns are looking at the same electorate and seeing very different things.

Jackson leads among men, 53% to 38%, and dominates among voters 65 and older, 63% to 34%. Bottoms leads among women, 51% to 44%, and runs strongly with voters under 30, 58% to 34%. The racial breakdown tracks with broader Georgia political patterns: white voters back Jackson 66% to 27%, Black voters support Bottoms 77% to 18%, and Hispanic voters lean toward Bottoms 52% to 38%.

Both candidates hold their bases. Jackson has 89% of Republican support; Bottoms has 88% of Democratic support. The voters neither has locked down — unaffiliated Georgians — break Jackson 43%, Bottoms 41%, with 16% still undecided. Those undecideds, in a race this tight, are the whole ballgame.

The Debate Refusal and What It Signals

When a candidate declines to debate, the question is always the same: what are they afraid of?

Republicans have a ready answer to that question — or rather, a counter-question. GOP strategists have pointed out that calls for more debates tend to come from the campaign that’s trailing. By that logic, Bottoms’ push for six statewide forums is less about civic duty and more about changing the dynamics of a race she needs to move.

Democrats frame it differently. Jackson is a billionaire businessman with no prior elected office. Bottoms has a record — as Atlanta’s mayor, as a public official who governed through a pandemic and a period of significant civil unrest. Debates, her campaign argues, are where records get tested and where voters get to see candidates think on their feet, unscripted. Refusing them, in their framing, looks like a man who’d rather not be scrutinized.

The History Bottoms Is Running Against

The last Democrat elected governor of Georgia was Roy Barnes, in 1998.

Georgia has changed. The 2020 presidential election, two Democratic U.S. Senate wins, and shifting demographics in the Atlanta suburbs have redrawn what’s possible. But the governor’s office has remained out of reach, and Jackson’s campaign is betting that the state’s political center of gravity still tilts Republican.

Bottoms’ record as Atlanta’s mayor will face fresh scrutiny as the race tightens. Her tenure covered some of the most turbulent years in the city’s recent history, and in a statewide race, what played as leadership in Atlanta will be relitigated through a different lens — particularly in the 158 counties that are not Fulton.

Jackson, for his part, is running as an outsider with business credentials in a state that has rewarded that profile before. His refusal to engage in an extended debate schedule fits a candidate who would rather define himself on his own terms than let an opponent set the stage.

With 46 days until the November 3 election, the question of whether they’ll share a stage more than once remains open. So does the question of what Georgia voters will make of the answer.