Mike Collins

With less than 100 days until the midterm elections in November, races in Georgia are heating up for two of the state's top seats.

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is leading the Democratic ticket in his reelection race against Republican Rep. Mike Collins. Former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms joins Ossoff at the top of the ballot as the Democratic nominee for governor, across from healthcare executive Rick Jackson running for the Republicans.

Ossoff has a lead in polling with incumbency. Also, conservative voices are stepping across party lines to back his reelection campaign. While Collins has stumped on his conservative bona fides, he has had to answer for a House ethics investigation about an alleged misuse of tax dollars as well as questions about his alleged ties to white supremacists. And Collins has the Trump endorsement, though he did not appear with the president during a recent visit to Georgia.

The governor's race is likely to come down to the wire.

In polling published by Quantas Insights on Aug. 10, Bottoms was only leading Jackson 46.4% to 44.9%, with another 7.7% of voters still undecided. That puts the race within two points, well within the margin of error of the poll.

Bottoms started her campaign strong in the polls and pulled out a widely successful primary, avoiding a runoff and jumping straight into her message for November. Since then, she has kept a slight lead over Jackson, but the longtime businessman has made up significant ground. Jackson faced Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was endorsed by Trump, in a Republican primary runoff just five months after announcing his candidacy for governor, and has only moved up in the polls since his first day on the campaign trail.

The two races, which could have widespread impacts not only in Georgia but in Washington, could yield a significant number of split tickets, meaning voters support one party for the governor's seat and another for the Senate. Based on polling alone, non-MAGA Republicans may stick to their party for Jackson but decide to support the popular Democrat for Senate.

It has happened in the Peach State before.

2026 midterm cycle mimics 2022 — so far

Bernard Fraga, a political scientist and professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said the pattern of support for the top two races in the 2026 cycle is not so different from the midterms four years ago in Georgia.

"I think that there are some parallels with the 2022 midterm election here in Georgia, where you had a separation in terms of polling between the Republican gubernatorial candidate, incumbent Brian Kemp, and the Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker," Fraga said. "It looked like voters were separating the two candidates, despite the fact that they shared the same party."

Kemp was a popular governor following the end of his first term.

Walker, a former University of Georgia football star turned politician, was strongly backed by Trump and riddled with controversy during his campaign. In one case, Walker was accused of paying for a former partner to receive an abortion despite later campaigning on a strong anti-abortion message. He denied the accusations only for his son, Christian Walker, to take to social media to criticize his father.

Kemp went on to win the governor's seat by eight points, while Walker lost the Senate race to Rev. Raphael Warnock in a runoff race by three points.

Fraga said voters at the time were able to separate the two candidates despite their shared ticket, and it's likely to happen again this year.

"I think it's possible that if voters, particularly Republican voters, are thinking about splitting their tickets, that the direction that split is going to go is in favor of Ossoff for Senate, but Jackson for governor," Fraga said. "I think that it just really reflects kind of natural proclivities of their campaigns and their relative strengths. I think that if we weren't in such a nationalized political environment where it seems like we're so divided, this wouldn't at all be surprising. ... It's really just surprising, given the broader environment, that voters still, not most of them but some of them, are willing to vote for a person and not just a party."

Jackson maintains distance from Collins

With a separation working in Jackson's favor, it's also not surprising Collins and Jackson have rarely appeared with one another, and have not been outspoken in their support for the other candidate.

Collins and Jackson were photographed together at the Tillman Rally in Floyd County, Georgia over the weekend, despite both attending an event in Athens the week prior and not appearing together. In a social media post from Collins, the representative did not mention Jackson by name or the governor's race, saying only, "We are going to take out Jon Ossoff in November and put a workhorse in the U.S. Senate."

In Jackson's post about the event, he did not share any images with Collins.

Other GOP voices are worried Collins could bring down the Republican ticket for both of them.

Shortly after the Senate primary runoff, Tea Party co-founder Debbie Dooley said, "Collins will hurt the GOP ticket" and listed past controversies associated with the representative.

"Here are just a few of the things Democrats will use against him that are public, so stop telling me to stop saying Collins will get trounced," Dooley wrote.

Cody Hall, an advisor to Gov. Kemp, said in May, "Mike Collins' record of corruption will either sink his campaign on June 16th or the Georgia Republican ticket this November." Kemp campaigned strongly for Collins' primary opponent, former college football coach Derek Dooley.

"(Jackson is) trying to thread the needle. I don't think Rick Jackson is especially worried about the hardcore, very conservative MAGA voters not supporting him and instead supporting Keisha Lance Bottoms. I don't think that's a realistic scenario. I think that instead he's trying to understand how he can turn out that MAGA base and also appeal to swing voters, most of whom, by virtue of being swing voters, are not solid MAGA," Fraga said. "That's really the story here. He is trying to play both angles as any candidate who is able to would try to do."

Fraga said, however, that at the end of the day he doesn't "think there's a lot of daylight between the Republicans, just like there's not a lot of daylight between the Democrats."

Collins, however, has kept his sights on Ossoff by trying to associate the senator with recent wins by Democratic Socialists and the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. Collins has said his race is not just about winning a seat in Georgia, but about the larger mission of maintaining conservative values in America on a national scale.

In a recent stop in Augusta, Collins said Ossoff was just the "tip of the spear" of a left shift in America and that Ossoff was being portrayed as presidential because his party wants him on the national ticket in 2028.

"Jon Ossoff votes 92% of the time with Bernie Sanders, and he's looking for the next person to take that mount. That's who it's going to be. They got to get him elected here in Georgia. And this is not just for Georgia to get rid of Jon Ossoff, this is for this country, and we need to stop this now in November," Collins said.

Irene Wright covers politics in Georgia as the Atlanta Connect reporter with USA Today’s Deep South Connect team. Find her on X @IreneEWright or email her at [email protected].