![]() ![]() Her gender, her race, plus her politics, those things in combination will make it a challenge.” “For that reason, she’s the kind of candidate a lot of conservative moderates won’t want to go near…. “She’s the kind of candidate that a lot of Democrats salivate over,” Swint said. Swint said that energizing Democratic voters would require Abrams to mount an aggressive campaign against her Republican opponent - a tactic that might risk alienating more moderate voters. “In order to win, there has to be a huge blue wave in November.” “It’s an uphill fight, but it’s a fight she could win,” said Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University, noting that the state has slowly been shifting from red to purple as its population becomes more diverse. The same approach may offer Abrams the best chance - even if it’s a long shot - in the general election. “What Abrams is basically arguing is, ‘I can at least do as well as, and at best I can actually probably excite more women and minority voters and get them out to vote in ways that my white counterparts might not be able to,’” she said.ĭata were not immediately available on minority turnout Tuesday, but a total of 554,450 people voted in the Democratic primary, compared with 607,875 in the Republican one - a much smaller gap between the parties than in 2010, the last time both parties had contested primaries. In the Georgia gubernatorial primary campaign, Abrams distinguished herself from Evans not so much on policy issues - both candidates pledged to increase the minimum wage, expand Medicaid and invest in education - but on strategy.Įvans, 40, an attorney who grew up in Ringgold, a small town in Georgia’s northwest corner, focused on winning over swing voters and reached out to the old Democratic Party coalition in Georgia, which includes minorities but also moderate whites.Ībrams focused on energizing minorities and young voters who have not always registered to vote or turned up at the polls.Īndra Gillespie, assistant professor of political science at Emory University, summarized the strategy: “It doesn’t make sense to go after centrist voters who don’t exist anymore or to go after working-class voters who have been voting Republican since before 2016.” House, he still lost to Republican Karen Handel. When Democrats smelled opportunity in Georgia last year and spent record amounts on their candidate, Jon Ossoff, in a special election for a seat in the U.S. Black women, who turned up at the polls in large numbers, played a key role in that outcome.īut that was a highly unusual election because of accusations Moore faced over the sexual abuse of minors, and even then he was only narrowly defeated. Democrats who hope that Abrams’ primary victory could be part of a wave of success across Georgia and other conservative states point to the December victory of Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in a special Senate election in Alabama. ![]()
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