What's your issue? Georgia election candidates leverage voter frustrations to drive turnout

Some 4.5 million Georgians may have cast midterm election ballot by the time results start being counted on Nov. 8, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Turnout rates for voters across the state increased in the spring primary election, and with major offices up and down the ballot, this vote promises to shape policy in Georgia — and the nation — for years.

Not all Georgians will vote based on the same policy issues, however. With early in-person voting and absentee balloting now underway, pocketbook issues and social policies are vying for top-of-mind priority with voters, and candidates are highlighting different topics.

All campaigns share one area of focus: Frustrations, and how their candidates can provide solutions. Republican messaging is heavy on the impact of inflation, crime, immigration and cultural issues. Democrats are leveraging abortion and reproductive rights and gun laws.

"What they want to do is tap into their base, who, when they get angry, turn out to vote at high rates,"  said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University.

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Election Survey: AJC 2022 General Election Survey - UGA SPIA

Most Georgia political observers agree the 2022 election will hinge on voter turnout and the political parties' ability to coax their voters to the polls. Midterm elections typically attract significantly fewer voters than presidential elections, even though Georgia elects its state constitutional officers, such as governor, during the midterms.

As Gillespie notes, campaigning on issues that resonate with voters can influence turnout.

Single-issue voters vs. kitchen table voters

Abortion is commanding broad attention from candidates of both parties. A University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs poll conducted in September showed that 44% of those polled, and nearly 75% of Democrats, said that the Dobbs v. Jackson decision to overturn Roe v. Wade made them more motivated to vote.

Another UGA poll conducted in October showed that 26% of respondents strongly supported Georgia's new abortion law, which bans abortion after about six weeks, while about 54% strongly opposed it.

"I think it's an open question about whether or not those efforts will work," Gillespie said of Democratic get-out-the vote efforts. "But the strategy is clearly to try to get young people, and women in particular, angry about the proscription of rights related to reproduction."

For those Georgians who aren't single-issue voters, several other topics are top-of-mind this election season. For most of those polled by UGA, the top issue was the cost of living (19.6%), threats to democracy (17%) and jobs and the economy (16.4%). Abortion was the top issue for just over 5%, behind immigration, guns, climate change and crime.

These issues will be tackled at both the state level, where Gov. Brian Kemp is running to hold his seat against Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, and at the federal level, where Sen. Raphael Warnock is running to keep his Senate seat against Republican Herschel Walker.

Every voter will have the chance also to vote on their congressional representative in the  U.S. House, as well as the Georgia General Assembly and a host of statewide positions from attorney general to secretary of state.

Georgia Election Survey: Georgia News Collaborative 2022 General Election Survey - UGA SPIA

Gubernatorial candidates stake out positions

Wedge issues are at the core of Georgia's governor's race. Kemp is running in part on his legislative victories, which include the abortion limitations, a permitless carry gun law and parental rights in education measures. Meanwhile, Abrams is arguing that Kemp's partisan agenda has left many Georgians behind.

In an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists political task force, Abrams identified bread-and-butter issues — good jobs, good education, good health care — as the critical issues that will get Georgia voters to the polls.

"The most important story not being told in Georgia is what Medicaid expansion actually is," Abrams said. "This is a massive infusion of capital to support a public health infrastructure that relies on those dollars and 38 states have successfully expanded Medicaid, reduced cost across the board, increased access to doctor visits, and addressed health care issues."

Abrams also highlighted the issue of access to housing, which she has highlighted during her campaign.

"We tend to see affordable housing as an Atlanta issue," she said. "We know throughout South Georgia, and in rural communities, access to jobs is entirely dependent on access to housing."

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Kemp has his own line of anti-other party talking points that he references on the campaign trail. A favorite is America's stubbornly high inflation rate, which he blames on President Joe Biden and the Democrats in the U.S. Congress.

"Every day, families in Georgia and across the country are facing the consequences of 40-year-high inflation driven by failed policies and leadership in Washington," wrote Kemp spokesperson Tate Mitchell, in response to an inquiry about the policy issues Kemp thinks will drive turnout. "While Stacey Abrams proudly supports the disastrous Biden agenda that created the current economic crisis, Gov. Kemp remains laser focused on providing inflation relief and building on his record of generating jobs, investment, and economic success in Georgia."

National partisanship or Peach State policy

Secretary of State Raffensperger, a Republican who is running for re-election against Democratic challenger Bee Nguyen, thinks the potentially high turnout is a reflection of interest in federal politics, even while Georgia's economy is doing well.

"I think it's voter engagement," he said. "I think voters nationally are feeling pain points — gas prices, inflation. Many of those are just federal issues."

In the U.S. Senate race, Warnock has taken action on specific policy issues, often in a bipartisan manner. His campaign advertisements highlight his efforts to cap insulin costs for those on Medicare and his work on peanut trade restrictions.

Yet Republican-funded attack ads attempt to tie him to Biden — in the October UGA poll, 49.3% of respondents strongly disapproved of Biden's job performance, including about a quarter of independents.

Abrams and Warnock "are attacked as being Joe Biden Democrats; that they do Biden's bidding all the time," said Gillespie. "The goal of that is to try to tie these Democrats to Joe Biden, and to remind him that if you disapprove of the job that Biden doing right, then don't give him people who are going to aid and abet the programs that he's already proposing."

Warnock's opponent, Herschel Walker, had adopted this approach, particularly in recent weeks when his campaign has been plagued by scandal, such as a recent story from the news website The Daily Beast that he paid for a former girlfriend's abortion in 2009.

"You're here because the Democrats are desperate to hold onto this seat, and they're desperate to make this race about my family," Walker told reporters at his first press conference after the story broke.  "They don't want to talk about Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock and what they've done to Georgia families."

Warnock, however, is polling better than Biden, with 46.4% support to Walker's 43.4%, and has consistently polled better than other Democrats statewide. How much that is attributable to Warnock's policy, as opposed to Walker's string of scandals, is an open question. At the end of the day it may not be the candidates' specific positions that sway voters.

"The overturning of Roe, that went a ways towards balancing enthusiasm by getting some Democrats more interested, more concerned about the campaign," said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor who has followed politics in the state for years.

Asked about other issues that might sway turnout, Bullock said voter turnout is likely to be more about political personality and partisanship — an October surprise, or a possible Donald Trump rally before the election.

"He may say or do things at that rally that might have an impact particularly, say, in the gubernatorial contest," Bullock said. "In that, if it re-awakened the dislike that white, college-educated voters, or a share of them, have for him, and they therefore decide to vote for Democrats in response, that could be important."

Reporting contributed by Raisa Habersham 

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: GA Election 2022: Cost of living, democracy, abortion, guns top issues