(CNN)Democrat Stacey Abrams won her party’s nomination in Georgia’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, becoming the first black woman in the country to win a major party’s nomination for governor.
She’s now hoping to win the general election and become the first African-American woman elected governor in the United States. It will be a more difficult task than winning the primary.
Georgia is still a red-leaning state. No Democrat has won a major statewide race in Georgia since 2006. No Democrat has won a governor’s race there since 1998. Republican President Donald Trump won the state by a five percentage point margin in 2016, even when he was losing nationally by a two-point margin.
The good news for Democrats is that the state seems to be becoming a little bit more purple over the last few election cycles. Trump’s five-point win was less than Republican Mitt Romney’s eight-point win in 2012, even though Trump lost the popular vote by two percentage points less. Trump’s win in Georgia is also considerably less impressive than when Republican George W. Bush won it by 12 in 2000 under a similar national environment.
Trump also continues to be less popular than the average Republican in Georgia. In two live interview polls conducted earlier this year by Mason-Dixon and the University of Georgia among registered voters, Trump’s net approval (approval – disapproval) rating averaged just -11 percentage points in Georgia. That was only slightly better than his overall popularity nationally at the time. (Nationally, of course, his popularity has seemed to improve over the course of this year.)
Here’s the bad for Democrats: It’s not entirely clear that Trump’s unpopularity in the state is going to weigh down his fellow Republicans…
