NEW POLL: Herschel Walker Leads Raphael Warnock

This according to Emerson College, whose latest numbers show something people on the ground in Georgia have been saying for a couple of weeks – Walker’s campaign is gaining momentum, with sizable crowds at his events, and Warnock is being pulled down by Joe Biden’s terrible approval ratings and bad Democrat policies that Warnock supports.

Out today: Walker 46, Warnock 44.

The latest Emerson College Polling survey of the Georgia general election finds Senator Raphael Warnock trailing his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker by two points, 44% to 46%. Four percent plan to vote for someone else and 7% are undecided. Regardless of whom they support, 53% expect the incumbent Senator Warnock to win while 47% expect Walker to win.  This reflects a tightening of the race since April, when the Emerson College poll had Walker ahead 49% to 45%.

Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling said, “Walker leads Warnock among rural voters 58% to 24% while Warnock leads Walker 66% to 25% among urban voters. In the suburbs, voters are breaking for Walker by a nine-point margin, 50% to 41%.”

Walker should be doing better than 25 percent in the urban parts of Georgia, but the question is how those are defined. If “urban” Georgia is Atlanta proper, Savannah proper, Macon proper, etc., then you’re talking about areas which are majority black and in that case a 25 percent share of that vote puts Walker in a position to win comfortably.

Particularly given that Warnock is only at 44 percent as the incumbent. Typically, an incumbent isn’t going to get more than 30 percent of the undecideds. So if Walker is at 25 percent of the urban vote he might really be looking at 31. And he might be looking at 56 percent of the suburban vote, and 70 percent of the rural vote.

And a 52-53 percent share overall.

The media has created a narrative that Walker has too many skeletons and is a bad candidate and therefore can’t win. But Warnock is an awful candidate in his own right, his closet is full of just as many skeletons as Walker’s, his politics are suited for a deep-blue state like Illinois or Hawaii rather than a reddish-purple state like Georgia and he’s battling some massive headwinds due to Biden’s terrible unpopularity in Georgia.

Biden’s approval in Georgia, per the CIVIQS tracking poll: 34 up, 57 down. As awful as that is, it’s actually eight points up from where it was six weeks ago. And when you’re a slavish devotee to an agenda your constituents hate, it’s how you lose.

In Georgia’s gubernatorial race, incumbent Republican Brian Kemp is holding on to a modest 48-44 lead over Stacey Abrams in Emerson’s poll. Kemp is underperforming, but that’s largely because his voters are more opposed to Abrams than they’re excited to vote for Kemp. But it looks like that’s probably enough given current circumstances.

The guess here is Warnock will struggle to show better than the 44 Emerson has him at today. He has all the money in the world, but he was an anomaly when elected in that January 2021 special election. Georgia has tightened up its election laws making ballot harvesting harder, and Warnock’s Democrats are destroying the country and Georgians see it.