Trump-endorsed Republican Georgia Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins has been hit with a nasty reality check as polling shows him down double-digits against rising Democratic star Sen. Jon Ossoff in one of the biggest battleground states in the country.
The polling by Trump’s favorite network Fox News shows the MAGA challenger with just 43 percent of the vote to Ossoff’s 56 percent among registered voters.
Collins handily won the Georgia Republican runoff last month after securing an 11th-hour endorsement from Trump, but now he is facing what appears to be an uphill climb against the incumbent Democrat in the highly competitive state.
Ossoff won his seat in the Georgia Senate runoff in 2021 by just over one point, or 54,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden barely eked out a victory in the 2020 presidential election before it flipped back to red for Trump in 2024.
But Ossoff has been making a name for himself on the campaign trail as one of the president’s harshest critics with a series of speeches that have gone viral for brutal takedowns of the president, calling out grift and corruption.
The poll released on Wednesday found Democrats are more fired up to support their nominee than Republicans are for theirs. 96 percent of Democrats backed Ossoff, and 8 in ten said their vote is for him rather than against his opponent.
Among Republicans, 89 percent said they support Collins, but only 56 percent said their vote was specifically in support of their GOP candidate, while 44 percent said their vote was mainly against Ossoff.
As Ossoff ties Collins to Trump, the Republicans have been trying to tie Ossoff to “woke” liberals and to liberal coastal elites, but it does not appear to be working so far. More voters view Collins as too close to Trump than those who believe Ossoff is too liberal.
The Democratic senator also has higher favorability: 58 percent of Georgians hold a favorable opinion of him, while only 44 percent hold a favorable opinion of Collins, just above the 42 percent favorability Trump holds, which is down five points from 2024.
Ossoff did not have a primary challenger and could zero in on the general election while Republicans were still fighting it out; he did not slow down and is now upping the pressure on Collins.
On Thursday, the Democratic senator challenged Collins to three televised general election debates ahead of Election Day in November.
“Collins is pro-cutting your health care, pro-tariffs, and pro-war, and I challenge him to three televised debates where he can try to defend his corruption while I present my vision for Georgia’s future,” Ossoff said in a statement.
Some Democrats have gone so far as to compare Ossoff and his rise on the national political stage to former President Barack Obama for his telegenic appearances and fiery speeches.
Ossoff has done his best to link Collins, who recently claimed Trump won the 2020 election in Georgia when he did not, to the president whose approval is deep underwater amid rising costs across the country, including in Georgia.
“Because while hundreds of thousands of Georgians lose their health care, Mike Collins builds Trump a ballroom,” Ossoff said at a recent rally in Savannah. “They worked harder burying the Epstein files than they ever worked to lower your grocery bill. And while you pay more for everything, the Trumps are raking in billions from all over the world.”
The Fox News poll found that inflation and higher prices were by far the most important issues for voters in Georgia when deciding whom to vote for in the Senate race. 40 percent called it the top issue. The second most important issue was health care at just 13 percent.
