Gov. Brian Kemp is leading former Sen. David Perdue by 32 points less than a week away from Georgia’s highly anticipated Republican gubernatorial primary, according to a Fox News poll published Wednesday.
Sixty percent of Georgia Republican primary voters prefer Kemp, compared with 28 percent who say they support Perdue. It’s a notable shift from March, when 50 percent of voters said they preferred Kemp, while 39 percent selected Perdue as their favorite.
The May 24 primary between Perdue and Kemp has seen heavy involvement from former President Donald Trump, who has made the governor one of his top midterm targets, along with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for refusing to intervene and overturn the state’s election results in 2020, when President Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia.
And former Vice President Mike Pence, who has also been the subject of Trump’s 2020 wrath, threw his support into the race last week, announcing he will hold a rally with Kemp on primary eve — his most notable act of defiance against his former boss to date.
Trump, meanwhile, has campaigned for Perdue and thrown money into the race. His political action committee and other Trump-aligned groups have boosted the campaign and funded TV advertisements hammering Kemp. But despite the weight of Trump’s intervention, top Republicans believe Kemp can secure more than 50 percent of the vote needed to avoid a June run-off race against his rival.
The winner is likely to face Democrat Stacey Abrams in the fall.
The Fox poll was conducted May 12-16 via telephone interviews among 1,004 Georgia Republican primary voters. The results have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
