Six weeks after Georgia’s Republican Senate candidates made their candidacies official, a picture is emerging — and it’s not flattering for any of them. A new Emerson College/Nexstar poll shows Ossoff at or near 47–49% against each potential GOP opponent, leading Rep. Buddy Carter by three points, Rep. Mike Collins by five, and former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley by eight. Meanwhile, 40% of Republican primary voters say they haven’t picked a candidate, a number that tells you everything about the GOP’s problem: the field lacks a dominant figure, and the primary itself could leave whichever candidate survives too bloodied to close the gap.
That’s the Georgia Senate race in March 2026 — and it’s shaping up as Ossoff’s race to lose.
The Three-Way Problem
Collins leads the Republican primary field at 30%, but 30% isn’t a lead when 40% are undecided and the threshold to avoid a runoff is 50%. Georgia requires a majority winner; if nobody clears 50% in the May 19 primary, the top two head back to voters on June 16. A fractured primary electorate plus Georgia’s runoff rules is a historically dangerous combination for Republicans — it’s the same dynamic that produced the January 2021 runoffs that Democrats swept to win the Senate.
Collins has an early edge among men and voters over 50. Carter has money and name recognition in coastal Georgia from his long congressional tenure. Dooley has Brian Kemp, which matters in a state where Kemp twice outran Trump — but may not matter enough if Trump decides to endorse someone else.
Trump hasn’t. That silence is the loudest signal in the race.
The Kemp Problem
When Kemp endorsed Dooley in August 2025, shortly after the former football coach entered the race, it was a calculated move — Kemp positioning himself as a kingmaker in his final year as governor while keeping a foothold in Georgia politics. The problem: it landed poorly in the Trump orbit.
“You can imagine how that was received in the White House when Kemp tries to rebuild this connection, then tells the president, ‘No, I’m not running — and I’m also picking a nominee,’” a GOP strategist familiar with the race told the Daily Caller earlier this month. The Kemp-Trump relationship never fully recovered from the 2020 election dispute, and Kemp’s preemptive Dooley move reopened those fault lines.
The practical effect: Dooley is running third at 10%, and the candidate with the most plausible MAGA endorsement path — Collins, who represents a deeply Trump-friendly district in northeast Georgia — is stuck trying to consolidate support without the explicit backing that would let him pull away. If Trump stays quiet through the primary, expect a messy runoff. If Trump speaks, it probably ends the race.
Ossoff’s Position
The Emerson numbers are genuinely encouraging for Democrats in a state that’s been trending Republican at the presidential level — Trump won Georgia in 2024. A first-term Democratic senator starting the cycle near 50% against every named Republican, with a 16-point advantage among independents, is not a typical Georgia Democrat’s position.
Some of that reflects who Ossoff is — he came up in documentary journalism, developed a reputation on Judiciary Committee for precise, unsparing questioning, and built a cross-demographic coalition in the 2021 runoff that surprised even optimistic Democrats. He’s now leaned into his work on antitrust, tech accountability, and government oversight as durable crossover issues in a state with a large tech economy.
And then there’s the money. Ossoff raised $12 million in just the third quarter of 2025 (July–September), entering the final stretch of last year with $21 million on hand. His Republican opponents are starting from essentially zero in terms of head-to-head name recognition against him, and they’re spending primary dollars tearing each other apart before they’ve even introduced themselves to a general-election audience. By the time the GOP runoff concludes in June — if it goes that far — Ossoff will likely have a $30M-plus cycle total, with the nominee scrambling to build a war chest.
What to Watch
The Emerson poll is from early March, before the primary race has fully taken shape. Collins’s path to 30% in the primary says he’s the strongest candidate — but his general-election numbers are the weakest against Ossoff, trailing by five points in a state where the average Republican runs about R+3. That gap suggests Collins has already consolidated his base without meaningfully expanding it. Carter, who trails in the primary, actually runs closer to Ossoff in some internal modeling.
The race’s true inflection point is a Trump endorsement. If it comes before May 19, expect the endorsed candidate to consolidate quickly and potentially avoid a runoff. If it doesn’t come — or comes after a bruising runoff — the winner arrives in June damaged and broke, facing a senator who’s been running a general-election campaign since January.
That’s the Ossoff playbook. Watch whether the GOP can disrupt it.
Sources
- Georgia 2026 Poll: Senator Ossoff Starts Re-Election Near 50% — Emerson College Polling — primary polling and head-to-head matchups
- Carter emerges as Ga. Senate contender — Punchbowl News — Carter’s entry and polling position
- Georgia congressman Buddy Carter launches MAGA warrior bid — Georgia Public Broadcasting — Carter campaign announcement
- United States Senate election in Georgia, 2026 — Ballotpedia — full candidate field and primary schedule
- Jon Ossoff Edges Out All But One Republican in New Georgia Senate Poll — Newsweek — general election matchup polling