One in 10 Georgia voters aren’t sold on Mike Collins for Senate — even though those same voters backed President Donald Trump in 2024, according to a new memo from Collins’ campaign.
The finding comes as public polling continues to show Collins trailing Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the premier battleground state. A YouGov poll released Wednesday found Ossoff up by 10 percentage points over Collins.
The memo identifies the “up for grabs” voters as Republicans and conservative-leaning independents who also plan to vote for the state’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Rick Jackson, and could decide the election.
“They should be voting for Mike Collins, and they are not yet, mainly because they do not have a firm opinion of him,” the memo reads. “Most of them cannot tell you anything about him, and a third have never seen an ad about him.”
Collins’ campaign has been working to convince GOP leaders and outside groups that he can narrow Ossoff’s polling advantage, as the party weighs how best to allocate its resources in the closing stretch of the election.
For now, top Republicans have appeared to deprioritize the Georgia Senate race as a top pickup opportunity — as other battleground states come more into view — but Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning to attend a fundraiser for Collins alongside Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday to shore up support.
The campaign memo makes the case that Collins does not need to build a new GOP coalition to close the gap but instead focus on the existing Republican coalition in the state that it identifies as still up for grabs for him.
Two-thirds of those voters live in the Atlanta media market, according to the memo, followed by Macon and Augusta.
“Streaming is how a plurality get live television,” the memo reads. “They are seeing fewer political ads than everyone else, so they need to see these messages more often, and they need to keep seeing them all the way through November 3.”
The overriding issue for these voters, according to the memo, is the cost of living. “Nothing else is close,” it says. The memo argues that the campaign’s closing message should introduce Collins by emphasizing his Georgia roots and business background while attacking Ossoff over taxes and other elements of his record.
“Every Georgian needs to understand how Jon Ossoff failed them by making their lives less safe and less affordable while aligning himself with far-left socialists who proclaim that ‘America deserved 9/11,’” Collins spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said in a statement.
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