Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is the strongest 2026 Republican Senate candidate to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in Georgia, a poll showed.
Raffensperger tied Ossoff with about 44% support in a hypothetical race from a poll by Republican-leaning Cygnal. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) and Insurance Commissioner John King came in at 43.3% support and 42.1% against Ossoff, respectively.
Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) ruled out running for the Senate earlier this month, sending Republicans scrambling to find a blue-chip candidate to replace him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) was briefly rumored to want to run, but she ended the speculation quickly.
Now, the state has no GOP candidates with definitive statewide recognition in the Senate race. Only Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA), who clocked in at 42.1% support, King, and a horse trainer have declared their campaigns.
Raffensperger has not let his intentions for the Senate race be known, but he has hinted at his plans. He told 11Alive in an April interview that he hoped the Republican Party put forward “a true conservative” for the 2026 races, and when asked what that looks like, he said, “I think you’re looking at him.”
He said he “could be” running but won’t announce his plans for “a few months.”
Other candidates, such as Small Business Administrator and former short-term Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who received 42.8% support in the poll, have been floated.
But Ossoff beat all of them in the poll, except for Raffensperger, who edged him out in a virtual tie by 0.2%. The poll indicated that there’s still Republican support left, though. In a generic ballot, 48.2% of voters said they would vote for the GOP while 44.5% said they would vote for the Democratic candidate.
Raffensperger is similar to Kemp in that he’s shown a capability to push back against President Donald Trump, which could attract Democratic or centrist Republican voters in the swing state but could also alienate core Trump voters. After he denied Trump’s request to help him “find” votes in the state following the 2020 election, the president slammed him repeatedly.
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Republicans have been trying to recapture Ossoff’s seat since Democrats flipped it in a 2021 runoff election. The GOP then also lost its other Senate seat in the state, held by Loeffler, to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in a special election before he captured it for a full term in 2022.
The Cook Political Report rates Ossoff’s seat as a “toss-up” in 2026. If Republicans capture it, they will likely retain control of the Senate.