Elections in Georgia

 Georgia is a swing state. Friends keep asking about the election, and particularly about U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who faces Republican challenger Mike Collins.

Generic Democrats have an 8-point advantage, 51-43, in the latest poll, but that figure has an asterisk. Polls in Georgia tend to have a blue bias, and this one has a bias estimated at 8 points. The usual explanation is that pollsters have trouble finding people in the rural parts of the state, which are heavily Republican.

People argue Trump’s influence both ways. His approval rating is 41 percent — a figure that’s been solid for a decade. It’s solid but not a majority: 56 percent disapprove.

The Georgia economy has been hurt by the war and by tariffs. It’s part of the Make America Great America doctrine that you have to say that the economy is better under Trump. But while four in 10 Georgians support Trump, only 28 percent say that the economy is better this year.

Ossoff v. Collins is not a contest between Democratic and Republican bases. Jewish groups that traditionally supported Democrats worked hard to elect Ossoff, the first Jewish senator from Georgia. Some of the people who supported him were so hurt by his criticism of Israel that they vowed to support anyone but Ossoff. Progressive groups are so angry about Ossoff’s vote to continue support for Israel despite the genocide that they vowed to support anyone but Ossoff.

Republicans are criticizing Ossoff too. But in terms of venom, I’d place them a distant third.

Collins is not distinguishable from other Trump supporters, at least not to me. Some Democrats have criticized him for prejudice against minorities. Typically, the complaints involve social media posts. One is that he posted a photograph of a Black man on the ground at a protest being hit by a law enforcement officer armed with a Taser. Collins’s comment suggested that’s the way to handle protesters.

The greater concern is about Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, who has 1.5 million followers on several platforms. His messaging is white supremacist, white nationalist and antisemitic. A recent poll asked followers why Gen-Z doesn’t hate Hitler.

News reports say Collins has “distanced himself” from his son-in-law. The Collins campaign uses the same language — “distance.”

Collins and his wife live in one house on the family property, while their daughter and son-in-law live in another house on the same property. I’m not sure that kind of distance means anything.