Rick Jackson (R) vs. Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)
I. The Race
Rick Jackson (Republican) is a billionaire healthcare executive who came out of nowhere to take the GOP gubernatorial nomination from a crowded field of candidates, including Trump-endorsed Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones. He has a relatable story from growing up in poverty and contributed large sums of his own money to finance his campaign.
Keisha Lance Bottoms (Democrat) was once mayor of Atlanta (2018-2022) and later worked in the Biden administration. Her campaign is very loudly anti-Trump to distract from her lack of meaningful achievement as Atlanta’s mayor; if elected, she would be the first black woman to govern an American state.
II. State Profile
Simply put, Georgia is a looming catastrophe of epic proportions for the Republicans. Perhaps not this year for governor, but almost certainly for U.S. Senator. Without a major change in racial voting patterns, Georgia looks like a blue state to me by 2036 – close enough to get excited about when the first votes drop, but urban and polarized enough to remember better days not so long ago.
President Trump carried Georgia by 5.1% in 2016, and barely had to campaign there despite his lack of political experience. Trump then gained a massive heap of net new votes and ran into Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s corrupt elections system and a 634 percent increase in mail-in ballot usage from 2016 to 2020. He managed to keep driving up his vote total in a re-try in 2024, and despite a prodigious performance, carried the Peach State by a measly 2.2%.
Presidential Margins
2016 Trump +5.1%
2020 Biden +0.2%
2024 Trump +2.2%
If you want to get into the weeds and details of the 2020 election in Georgia and other states, read my book, The American War on Election Corruption.
Georgia still has plenty of issues with public confidence in election results, but its political problems remain. The Atlanta metro dominates the rest of the state. Fulton and DeKalb Counties are the two Democrat strongholds making up core Atlanta. They are flanked by Cobb and Gwinnett Counties, two former Republican strongholds of the suburban variety that both flipped in 2016 and gotten bluer and bluer. The graphic below illustrates just how badly President Trump has been smoked in metro Atlanta:
Southern black voters are more loyal to Democrats than black voters anywhere else. In Georgia, from the 1990s until only recently, they were easily outvoted by the extremely conservative white voter base. Unfortunately for Republicans, the turn to Republican populism (“MAGA”) has created a moderate wing of the party that is confined to metro Atlanta that has been instrumental for declining margins not only in northern Fulton County, but also in suburban counties like Forsyth and Cherokee Counties.
The rural counties of Georgia (outside of the “Black Belt” rural counties that support Democrats) are overwhelmingly red. The issue is that they are maxed out and practically incapable of producing notably larger margins in absolute votes. Any major growth in Atlanta without progress with voters there, or further slippage in suburban counties, makes a blue Georgia increasingly likely in coming years.
Key Statistics
• 53.2% White, 32.3% Black, 10.5% Hispanic
III. Market Assessment
Polymarket bettors favor Bottoms, but Jackson is still considered competitive and subject to the same wild swings in these markets impacting all GOP candidates.
IV. History
Georgia’s gubernatorial history closely resembles Texas’s, even if the current chapter started eight years later than the Lone Star State’s. In 2002, Sonny Perdue was elected governor of Georgia, defeating Roy Barnes. In winning that race, Perdue became the first Republican governor of the Peach State since Reconstruction. He served two terms and gave way to Nathan Deal, a former Democrat, who won in 2010 and took over in January 2011.
In 2018, the first electoral test of the state since Trump’s election win, Secretary of State Brian Kemp was the GOP nominee for governor in a race everyone overlooked. It nearly backfired, but Kemp held on by a tiny margin over progressive favorite Stacey Abrams.
Just 54,723 votes, 1.4%, separated Kemp and Abrams, thus preventing the good people of Georgia from having this individual as their governor:
Kemp wound up waffling on his pledge to root out the corruption of the 2020 election and sided with Raffensperger over Trump; this earned Trump’s ire, so he endorsed former Senator David Perdue to primary Kemp in 2022. Kemp throttled Perdue, then wen t on to beat Abrams soundly in a rematch in the General Election (+7.5% margin).
To conclude, the modern history of Georgia suggests the state prefers Republican governors. It should not surprise you that an anti-Trump state rewarded the governor who stuck it to Trump the most, and this is an important thing for understanding how things next week will likely unfold.
V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results
This is going to highlight a major Republican problem that will be a recurring theme in Georgia.
First, the easy part. Bottoms advanced with a majority in the Democrat primary to become the party nominee. She blitzed past six opponents, including former Republican quisling Geoff Duncan, who was once the state’s Lieutenant Governor. He preached all the “conservative” talking points, went on cable news to bash Trump, and then when he realized his career was dead in the water, changed his views on abortion to become a Democrat and pander around Atlanta. He reminds me very much of the hunchback in the movie 300; he betrayed Leonidas and then the enemy he helped threw him to the side, too.
Now, on to the Republicans. Jones, Trump’s endorsed pick popular with the grassroots wing of the GOP, beat Jackson in the first go-around, but didn’t get to a majority. Jackson won in the June 16 run-off:
Notably, Jackson dominated Jones inside the Atlanta metro:
Tensions have remained escalated with no end in sight. The candidates have traded campaign-related lawsuits, and recently Jones declined to attend a Trump rally because Jackson was going to attend. This can only harm the GOP’s chances in a state they’re already struggling to compete in. The root issue is the rift between the rural grassroots and suburban voters who are needed to chip Atlanta’s margins.
VI. Polls
Jackson leads the average of polls by one single percentage point, according to the RCP file – but hasn’t hit 50% in any of those he leads.
VII. Media Ratings
Everyone is keeping their powder dry regarding this race; they’ve all been stuck at “toss-up” for weeks, possibly due to the bad blood between Jones and Jackson.
VIII. Party Registration
Georgia does not register voters by party; however, new transplants over significantly Democrat:
IX. Election Considerations
Georgia has Automatic Voter Registration, a lot more mail-in voting than it had a decade ago, a dominant Democrat super-center of an urban area, and a Secretary of State (on his way out) very few trust to administer elections after the 2020 debacle.
Fortunately, the legislature has made a few incremental changes to improve things, and the primary method of voting is early in-person voting with Voter ID. You can read more about Georgia’s overrated and vulnerable election system in my 2024 review of the topic:
Georgia – 2024 Election Compendium
X. Summary and Election Estimate
The nominations of both parties for governor and the U.S. Senate offer quite the contrast.
Republicans nominated the uber-conservative grassroots fighter that appeals to rural voters, but not suburban voters, in an attempt to knock off Jon Ossoff that is widely expected to come up short (including by yours truly). Through the run-off, they also nominated Jackson, who lacks bona fide conservative credentials and the pro-Trump background he would have needed to be nominated in a state like Arizona or Texas. While that may not animate the base, the prospect of Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor will.
Bottoms declined to run for reelection as mayor of Atlanta, and for good reason. She was in charge during the COVID-19 crisis and also oversaw a massive uptick in violent crime in her four years. She is widely associated with being a failed leader and didn’t give herself much time out of the spotlight before jumping back in.
The impact of her failure in Atlanta will be exactly what Jackson needs in Cobb and Gwinnett County; Kemp lost both of them in 2022, but cleared 47% in Cobb and 44% in Gwinnett – meaningfully higher shares than Trump was able to secure in 2024. Jackson’s non-MAGA credentials will also play well in north Fulton County, which has a large establishment-oriented voting bloc that will come back to him rather than back Bottoms.
Jackson has a slight edge in my decision matrix:
Forecast for GA Governor
Based on Georgia’s preference for GOP governors, recent retention of two Republican-aligned Supreme Court justices, Jackson’s non-MAGA disposition, and Bottoms’s bad track record as Atlanta mayor, I feel confident this race leans toward Jackson. Without the warring going on between Jackson and Jones, I’d feel extremely confident, especially since Jackson has Bottoms beat about 10-to-1 on finances. Black rural turnout is down, but a bad Election Day from the Republican rurals, tied to the Jackson-Jones rift, is what could derail the GOP train and get Georgia’s misery started ahead of schedule.
Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.
