At the outset of the 2022 cycle, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp looked like the most vulnerable Republican incumbent on the map. He was staring down a bruising primary challenge, egged on by former President Donald Trump, and then in the general was going to face Stacey Abrams, a Democrat he narrowly defeated in 2018.
But Kemp’s fortunes have certainly rebounded from where he was at the beginning of 2021. The Trump-backed intraparty threat from David Perdue never seriously materialized, with Kemp absolutely humiliating the former senator during the May 24 primary by more than 50 points. Kemp showed that the Peach State was Trump’s kryptonite, overcoming any lingering MAGA hostilities for refusing to overturn the state’s 2020 election results to help Trump. It wasn’t just Kemp that won, but other Kemp-backed, Trump-opposed candidates up and down the ballot were victorious as well.
We didn’t want to make any snap judgments immediately after Kemp’s impressive primary finish, and wanted polling to bear out if the governor would get a bump. Additionally, given the first leaked Dobbs draft and then
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