Should Georgia prepare for primary runoffs? Polls show close races

It's almost election day, and candidates up and down the ballot are getting their last messages to voters in hopes of getting the chance to run in November.

The midterm primary election in Georgia is Tuesday, May 19, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. across the state.

The primaries for Georgia's top seats have crowded fields, with as many as 15 names in the gubernatorial race on both sides of the aisle, and multiple Republicans fighting it out to run against Jon Ossoff for the U.S. Senate.

Will candidates be able to reach a 50% majority in the primary? Or, should Georgia prepare to head to the ballot box a second time next month?

Latest polls show tight Republican races

Possibly the most contested race in Georgia is the Republican primary for governor, where Trump-back Burt Jones is hoping to fight off Trump-hated Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and healthcare CEO and political outsider Rick Jackson.

Jones and Jackson have been going back and forth at the top of the polls, followed at a significant margin by Raffensperger.

A new InsiderAdvantage poll which spoke to Georgia voters over the weekend and published May 17, showed Jackson leading with 31% of the vote, followed by Jones at 27% and Raffensperger at 16%.

The five other candidates for governor — Chris Carr, Gregg Kirkpatrick, Clark Dean, LeLand Ollinger II and Kenneth Yasger — failed to make it into double-digit support. There was still a significant enough number of undecided voters, 12%, who may still be swayed over the next day before they cast their vote.

The poll mimics others published earlier in the spring, and back the assumption by many political analysts that the primary race will go to a runoff.

The same can be said of the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat. The new InsiderAdvantage poll showed Mike Collins leading with 32%, but Kemp-endorsed Derek Dooley is not far behind at 26%, followed by Buddy Carter at 21% support. There are still 18% of voters who say they were undecided as of this weekend.

Dooley has made up significant ground in the last few weeks, pulling ahead of Carter just days before the election and hoping for a second-place finish that could send him to a runoff.

A runoff will be called if a single candidate fails to reach 50% support. So this means even if one candidate has a clear lead over all others, if their final vote count is below 50%, the top two candidates will be on the ballot in a runoff election on June 16.

Bottoms has strong lead for Democrats, but is it enough?

On the Democratic side of the ticket, former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms has led the polls for months, and her name recognition across the state could be enough for Democrats to look past her single-term residency in Atlanta.

But, she may be fighting to convince the undecided voters more than fighting against her primary opponents.

In a poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this month, 35% of Democratic primary voters were still undecided in the seven-person race. That is just shy of Bottoms' lead at 39%, followed by Michael Thurmond, Jason Esteves, Geoff Duncan, Amanda Duffy, Olu Brown and Derrick Jackson.

Bottoms has been endorsed by former president Joe Biden who applauded her work in the Biden Administration after she left the mayor's seat.

Her campaign has stuck to the message that Bottoms, who would be both the first Black and first female governor of Georgia, is the greatest hope for the state to go blue in the midterm.

"Our campaign is building momentum at the right time, as voters know that Keisha is the strongest candidate to defeat whatever Trump Republican emerges from the GOP primary and win the governorship for Democrats this November," Rashad Taylor, campaign manager for Bottoms said in a statement following the publication of the InsiderAdvantage polls.

While Bottoms may have a commanding lead at the close of voting on Tuesday, she is still unlikely to hit the 50% majority needed to win, and will go to a runoff with whichever candidate can pull out a second-place finish.

When is the Georgia midterm election?

Election day in Georgia is Tuesday, May 19. If runoffs are needed for any races, they will be held on June 16.

To see if you are registered to vote, your polling location and more, visit the My Voter Page from the Georgia Secretary of State's office.

Irene Wright covers midterm races in Georgia as the Atlanta Connect reporter with USA Today’s Deep South Connect team. Find her on X @IreneEWright or email her at [email protected].