Tuesday 24 May 2022 01:01 PM Georgia heads to polls after highest early voting primary turnout EVER - ... trends now
Georgia primary voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday, where the strength of Donald Trump's endorsements will be tested on everything from Congressional races, the governor's primary and even for the role overseeing the state's elections.
The Peach State shattered early voting records for a primary election, with more than 850,000 already cast according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office.
'Compared early-voting turnout in recent primaries, this represented a 168 percent increase over the 2018, the last gubernatorial primary and a 212 percent jump above 2020, the last presidential primary year,' a statement from his office read.
Raffensperger credited the state's newly-passed election security law for the surge by creating 'short lines, smooth easy ballot access, and confidence in ballot security,' despite Democrat critics blasting it as 'voter suppression.'
In the heavily-rural 14th Congressional District, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing a crowded field of opponents trying to take her seat led by healthcare executive Jennifer Strahan.
Meanwhile Republican voters statewide will go to the ballot box to decide whether to keep Governor Brian Kemp or get behind his Trump-backed opponent, former Senator David Perdue.
Strahan is hoping to offer voters the same brand of Trump-inspired America First politics without the eyebrow-raising headlines that caused Greene to be stripped of her committee assignments by the Democrat-led House early last year.
Asked how Greene feels heading into Tuesday race, her spokesman told DailyMail.com that 'she is very confident.'
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her main opponent, healthcare executive Jennifer Strahan, both spent the weekend campaigning for voters' attention in Georgia's 14th Congressional District
Greene's spokesman directed DailyMail.com to the congresswoman's Telegram channel, where she shared photos and videos of herself mingling with supporters
Strahan also reached out to voters across the district, seeking to separate herself from Greene as someone who will be a serious lawmaker rather than generating eye-popping headlines on a regular basis
He also sent links to Greene's Telegram channel that contain images of the Congresswoman mingling with and embracing voters in the lead-up to her first re-election bid.
Among Strahan's most persistent lines of attack against Greene involve accounts from constituents who claim the lawmaker does not engage with them and ignores their needs.
The businesswoman's campaign claims Greene is already playing dirty, sharing with DailyMail.com screenshots of messages from people claiming to have seen Strahan campaign signs being ripped out of the ground.
'Hey, I just saw a pickup driving down the street down here...They were ripping up all the Strahan signs and putting up MTG signs. I think they're feeling threatened,' one of the messages read.
Another message to Strahan's campaign read: 'I know you get millions of messages and probably will never see this but I just wanted to let you know that I'm(sp) Summerville on highway 114 I saw some crazy man tearing down your signs and throwing them into the woods.'
Greene's critics want to see a repeat of her ally Rep. Madison Cawthorn's stunning defeat in North Carolina last week to a Republican establishment-backed rival - but political experts do not think that will be the case.
Dr. M.V. Hood III, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia and the Director of the SPIA Survey Research Center, told DailyMail.com that Greene's national headlines - which include her past support for QAnon theories and supporting calls for violence against Democrat leaders before she was in office - do not have the same effect on the local scale in the 14th District.
'She does retail politics. She's in the district, she talks to people, she does a lot of very normal - even though she appears to be somewhat extreme in some of her statements - I mean, the kind
