2018 Georgia gubernatorial election


The 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, concurrently with other statewide and local elections to elect the next governor of the U.S. state of Georgia. Incumbent Republican Governor Nathan Deal was term-limited and thus could not seek re-election to a third consecutive term. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp won the election, defeating Democratic former State Representative Stacey Abrams by just under 55,000 votes.
The primary elections were held on May 22, 2018, and a primary runoff was held on July 24, 2018, between Republican candidates Kemp and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, with Kemp winning the runoff election. Abrams won the Democratic primary with over 75% of the vote, allowing her to avoid a runoff. Kemp was the sitting Secretary of State at the time of the election, leading to accusations of a conflict of interest, as he would be overseeing an election that he was a candidate in.
If no candidate had gained a simple majority of the votes in the general election, a runoff election between the top two candidates would have been held four weeks later on December 4, 2018.
On November 7, Kemp declared victory over Abrams with 50.3% of the vote versus her 48.7%, while Libertarian candidate Ted Metz trailed behind both with 0.9%. The following morning, Kemp resigned as Secretary of State. On November 13, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May ruled that Gwinnett County violated the Civil Rights Act in its rejection of absentee ballots after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg ruled the previous day that the votes must be counted and preserved. On November 16, every county certified their votes with Kemp leading by roughly 55,000 votes. Shortly after the election certification, Abrams suspended her campaign; while she refused to concede defeat to Governor-elect Kemp, she acknowledged that she could not win the election. This was the closest governor's race in Georgia since 1966.

Republican primary

Candidates

Nominated

First round

Polling

Results

Runoff

and Brian Kemp advanced to a runoff on July 24 since neither candidate amassed over 50% of the vote in the May 22 primary. On July 18, President Trump tweeted his support for Kemp, and Vice President Pence traveled to Georgia to campaign with him on July 20.

Polling

Debates

Results

easily won the runoff by nearly 40 points despite the latest polls having him up by no more than 18. Cagle won only two counties, Monroe and Stephens.

Democratic primary

Candidates

Nominated

Polling

Results

Libertarian primary

Candidates

Declared

Debates

;Notes

Endorsements

Polling


Hypothetical polling		------

;with Casey Cagle

Results

Results by county

Here are the results of the election by county. Red represents counties won by Kemp. Blue represents counties won by Abrams.

Voter demographics

Electoral controversies

Kemp retained his office as Georgia Secretary of State throughout the campaign, leading to allegations of a conflict of interest for overseeing an election in which Kemp himself was a candidate. During the campaign, he was called upon by former President Jimmy Carter and the Georgia chapters of the NAACP and Common Cause, to resign. Kemp refused to do so until after he'd claimed victory, two days after the election. Kemp also accused the state Democratic Party of hacking into the state's voter database a few days before the election; however, an email released shortly after the accusation was made showed the party warning election security experts, highlighting "massive" vulnerabilities within the state’s My Voter Page and its online voter registration system, not an attempt to hack the database, as Kemp had claimed.
Irregularities in voter registration occurred prior to the day of the election: over 300,000 people were wrongly flagged by the state as being ineligible to vote, and 53,000 voter registrations were delayed by Kemp's office without adequately notifying the applicants. These irregularities, which disproportionately affected black voters, resulted in allegations that Kemp was using voter suppression to increase his chances of winning the contest. Georgia election officials responded to these allegations by stating that any voter flagged for irregularities could still vote, receiving a regular ballot, by providing ID at a valid polling place, as is required of all voters by state law. Concerning the question of why the pending registration status mattered if those voters could vote normally at the polls, critics claimed that learning of this status might discourage those voters from turning out to the polls at all.
On November 16, Abrams announced that she was ending her campaign. She emphasized that her statement was not a concession, because "concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper", but acknowledged that she could not close the gap with Kemp to force a runoff. In addition, her campaign filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia and created an organization called Fair Fight Georgia.
An investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found "no evidence... of systematic malfeasance – or of enough tainted votes to force a runoff election".
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