Georgia voters head to polls with both parties anxious

Today’s newsletter highlights:

• Mike Collins campaigns solo on election eve.
• Hispanic voters are making up a larger share of the electorate than ever.
• Raphael Warnock calls Democratic infighting in Michigan Senate race “bizarre.”

The final push

It’s Election Day in Georgia, and the two parties are on edge.

Republicans are worried they won’t muster the Election Day turnout needed to overcome a record-setting early vote that has energized Democrats.

Democrats are “nauseously optimistic,” as U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock put it, daring to dream of a historic sweep without quite believing it’s within reach.

After two decades of mostly Republican dominance in state government, Democrats sense something bigger is at hand.

“It’s a rare feeling for Democrats over the last 20 years to be talking about winning everything,” said state Sen. Josh McLaurin, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

But here we are.

That optimism comes with a healthy dose of anxiety. Democratic nominee for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms and U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff spent election eve urging supporters to knock on doors, chase down votes and resist the temptation to celebrate early.

Georgia Democrats have seen promising elections slip away before.

“You don’t want to get to the one yard line and fumble the ball,” Bottoms warned supporters in southwest Atlanta. “We don’t want to have record turnout and then get overtaken on Election Day.”

Republican nominee for governor Rick Jackson, meanwhile, seemed more encouraged when he ended his final campaign swing with Gov. Brian Kemp. He felt that increasingly urgent warnings from GOP leaders were finally breaking through.

“I think we waited a little bit too late to say, ‘Guys, we have a problem. We can lose this race, and you cannot take it for granted,’” he said, hoping rural Republicans would respond.

That’s the central tension in Georgia as polls open. Democrats believe they’re on the cusp of a breakthrough that could reshape state politics. Republicans are counting on a late surge to prove them wrong.

Warnock was already thinking about the long-term stakes.

“I’ve got a feeling that Georgia, the home state of Martin Luther King Jr., arguably the greatest American who ever lived, is getting ready to push the nation a little bit closer towards his ideals,” he said.

Things to know

Good morning! Happy Election Day. The polls are open until 7 p.m. Here are three things to know for today:

• Greg Bluestein reviews five questions we’re asking ahead of tonight’s election results.
• When will we know who won today’s election? Caleb Groves writes about the process of counting ballots.
• U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared torn Monday when considering if the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office correctly defeated a pregnancy bias lawsuit filed by a fired staffer who’s now claiming the office waited too long to make its winning argument, Rosie Manins reports.

Going it alone

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins has President Donald Trump’s endorsement for his race against Ossoff. But the rest of the Republican ticket has not been rallying to rescue Collin’s lagging campaign.

The congressman held a solo news conference in an Atlanta parking lot Monday as he neared the end of his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Talking over two nearby leaf-blowers, Collins called his race a toss-up, although the most recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed Collins trailing Ossoff by about 8 percentage points.

“We’re still running wide-open,” he said. “This race is too close to slow down.”

As Collins appeared in Atlanta, Jackson was campaigning about 40 miles north in Canton with Kemp and multiple fellow statewide GOP candidates.

While Ossoff, Bottoms and other Democrats have been campaigning as a unity ticket with “whole ballot energy,” Collins has largely been left to fend for himself. The congressman had more solo events in Martinez, Savannah and Macon on Monday.

Jackson campaigned across Georgia on a seven-stop fly-around tour, with the governor, first lady Marty Kemp and several statewide candidates joining them. Collins was not in the group.

“I‘m just focusing on our race,” Jackson said. “I think the state race is a different race than the federal race. That’s a different race altogether.”

The outsider’s insiders

Jackson has run for governor as a political outsider, but he has also managed to hire an army of political insiders as staff, consultants and vendors.

Consider Smart Media Group. We reported last week that the firm doing Jackson’s ad buys is the largest overall recipient of the $220 million the campaign has spent so far.

The Virginia-based Republican firm has received roughly $126.4 million from Jackson’s campaign as of his latest financial disclosure report.

The well-connected company was also a primary media vendor for Trump’s PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in the 2024 campaign.

And it was named earlier this year in a Democratic U.S. Senate probe as the ad buyer for former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s notorious ad campaign featuring the Republican riding a horse near Mt. Rushmore.

Latino voters flock to polls

Hispanic voters have been fueling part of the state’s record turnout numbers.

More than 105,000 Hispanic voters cast ballots ahead of Election Day, according to Georgia Votes, compared to just under 50,000 ballots cast during the same period in 2022.

The voter bloc is making up a bigger share of Georgia’s voting population than ever before: around 3.7% so far compared to by 2% four years ago.

It’s a trend seen in other places across the country, with Democrats hoping to capitalize on Hispanic voters’ frustrations over issues like the cost of living, immigration enforcement and government corruption.

One poll released last month conducted by NBC News in partnership with Telemundo and another by the Pew Research Center both show decreased presidential approval ratings among the Hispanic voters.

Listen up

Today on the “Politically Georgia” podcast Greg Bluestein, Patricia Murphy and Tia Mitchell break down the numbers, ticket splitting and down-ballot races to watch tonight as election returns come in.

You can listen and subscribe to “Politically Georgia” for free on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have a question or comment for the show? Email us at politicallygeorgia@ajc.com or give us a call at 770-810-5297 and you could be featured on a future episode.

Warnock on El-Sayed

Warnock was a surprise guest during a live taping Monday of the “Higher Learning” podcast with former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay and media personality Van Lathan Jr. The crowd went wild when Warnock took the stage, causing Lathan to quip, “That sounded very presidential.”

The hosts asked Warnock what he thought about Democratic U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens’ decision to endorse Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in the Michigan U.S. Senate race. (Stevens lost in the Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed.) After a long pause, Warnock said it was “bizarre.”

Warnock said that Stevens in the “embodiment of a sore loser” and said he worried she was making the election about her instead of what’s at stake, like healthcare and ending the war in Iran. Warnock also defended El-Sayed, whom he has campaigned with.

“He’s tried to improve public health in Detroit; he is committed to everyday, ordinary people,” Warnock said. “And as I listen to him, I think as a Muslim, he’s a whole lot closer to Jesus than these Christian nationalists.”

The hosts ended by noting Warnock’s popularity and asking if he had anything to share, a hint at rumors that he is considering a run for president. The Atlanta Democrat said he did have an announcement to make, then told the crowd to make sure they vote on Tuesday if they hadn’t already.

Today in Washington

• Trump will host an election night watch party at the White House.
• The House and Senate return to Washington on Monday.

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