Here's a fun take, if Raffensperger wins his primary he's safe even if all other statewide seats somehow flip to Democrats. Holcomb-level crossover support. He'll end up being Georgia's Jim Hood. I mean, his ads write themselves. "The Republican who stood up for democracy while all the others worshiped the ground Trump walked on."
The problem with this argument is that (a) there’s not really a substantial pool of ‘moderate’ (i.e., Democratic-leaning but open to supporting the right kind of Republican) persuadable voters in GA, especially in the Democratic coalition, which is arguably the most rock-ribbed one of any state in the country; (b) the kind of Republican who would be acceptable to
Democrats in the Atlanta metro is not making it out of the R primary in a state where at least 43% of the GE and probably north of 80% of the Republican primary electorate is still solidly conservative (advertising himself as anti-Trump would be a surefire way to end his career before he even makes it to the GE); (c) a Holcomb-type overperformance isn’t really feasible in a state where rurals/exurbs already vote mostly >70% R and the kind of places you’re counting on to deliver an overperformance are zooming leftward, becoming more and more non-white, and turning increasingly liberal/Democratic rather than moderate. There’s just no path for a Holcomb-or Hood-type GOP overperformance in a state like GA. Isakson was probably as close to that as you could realistically get in a state like GA, but even he was still fairly conservative and only received 55% in a race where Democrats didn’t even try as a two-term incumbent with a lot of goodwill.
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