One of the country's most interesting battles is underway in the Peach State, with Georgia Governor odds among the tightest in the country. Democrats are looking to flip the chamber as the next step in the rapidly blue-trending state where they won two Senate seats and the Presidential vote in 2020. Georgia midterm odds could also play a big role in 2028 positioning, making the state outsized in national importance.
Georgia Governor odds: Bottoms vs. Jackson
Republicans currently hold the Georgia governorship, having won it in 2018 and 2022 in a duel between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. Kemp, who ran an ad in 2018 highlighting his pickup truck as a way to round up illegal immigrants, barely scraped by. However, he then stood up to Donald Trump’s efforts to meddle with Georgia's 2020 election results, a fight that cemented his centrist credentials and helped him win the state handily, even as Herschel Walker lost the Senate race in 2022.
With Kemp out of the picture, Democrats are optimistic they can win the state. They’re running former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in what will be a very good Democratic year. With Republicans running Rick Jackson, a billionaire businessman with no electoral track record, Democrats don’t face a Brian Kemp-level challenge.
Yet this race is nowhere close to an easy win for Democrats, unlike the state’s Senate seat. That comparison, and the implications of losing this seat, both come back to Jon Ossoff.
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The Ossoff in the room
Jon Ossoff will win Georgia’s Senate race by a lot. He’s currently up 9% on Nate Silver’s polling average, and even though he’s running against a sitting Congressman, Ossoff is on cruise control. The GOP’s main Senate Super PAC has pulled funding from the state because it’s unwinnable. That tailwind means that, if she wins, Bottoms will follow her to the finish line.
The problem is that Ossoff can only do so much. In 2022, Raphael Warnock led by 1% on the same day Kemp beat Abrams by 8%. The Atlanta suburbs are full of social liberals and anti-Trumpers who like Ossoff and Warnock, think that Republicans in DC haven’t stood up to Trump enough, and generally think Georgia's been governed well over the last decade. That voter will decide the Governor’s race.
Ossoff promised to spend his $26M war chest and not roll it over, an effort to help elect Bottoms as Governor. If Ossoff’s campaigning can increase the number of his voters who also vote for Bottoms, then Democrats will be well positioned to flip the Governor’s mansion.
Now Ossoff insists he’s not running and promised to serve his six-year Senate term if re-elected. People don’t believe him, which is why he’s still at 14% and co-favorite for the next Democratic nomination, but seemingly every Democratic operative, podcaster, and pollster would love for him to change his mind.
That is why winning this race matters so much to so many Democrats, in a way that beating Joe Lombardo in Nevada doesn't.
But that incentive works the other way, too: Republicans are heavily incentivized to get Jackson over the line to keep Ossoff out of Presidential politics, or to keep the possibility of a replacement if he decides to run. It’s also hugely important whether Georgia, with an 8-6 Congressional map, could, in theory, be redistricted to draw out Black Democratic seats in Atlanta or the state’s southwest. A Democratic governor could veto any such attempt.
View all of the current 2026 midterm odds
Early votes?
Georgia’s one of the few states where early vote takes are at least somewhat useful, but for the Governor’s race it’s still useless. The electorate, at least so far, has seen robust Black turnout above comparable days in 2022 and 2024. Given that Warnock won in 2022 and Kamala Harris lost by only 2%, Georgia's turnout so far puts Jon Ossoff on track to win. But turnout data helps only when we know, or at least think we know, what voters in a group will do.
In Georgia, five major statewide elections since the pandemic -- 2020, 2021 runoffs, 2022 general, 2022 runoff, and 2024 -- mean we can tell this electorate will be bluer than in past years. But that doesn’t tell us how many Ossoff-Jackson voters there will be.
Obviously, the Blacker the electorate, the better for Democrats, but early vote data won’t tell us whether Bottoms is diminishing the crossover.
Conclusion
America has never elected a Black woman as Governor of a state, and Georgia has a chance to do so after failing to do so in the last two elections. Bottoms has strong tailwinds to help her achieve that goal: a favorable year, a popular Senator embracing her and trying to drag her over the line, and a neophyte opponent, but she’s in for a hell of a fight. There’s almost nothing between them, and Georgia gubernatorial odds will be among the tightest all the way through Election Day, and probably much of the night too.
