Are Georgia Senate Primaries Worth The Runoff?

By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

In my last column, I examined the role of the runoff in Georgia gubernatorial races. What lessons can we learn from U.S. Senate races in Georgia? In this column, I examine 26 cases of contests from both parties from 1992 to 2022, looking for clues that could decipher what might happen later this month, and in the Fall of 2026.

In this analysis, I add a factor: the challenge. In ten Senate races, there was no challenge to the incumbent or front-runner. In 16 cases, at least one candidate got enough signatures or votes in the polls to constitute a challenge. The unchallenged candidate won six of these ten races. The challenged contests were only successful in seven of 16 times, a less successful situation for the party (43.75 percent, as compared to 60 percent for challenged races).

In 15 Senate cases, there was no runoff. In 11 other cases, there was a runoff battle. For these cases with a runoff, the winner of the runoff won 54.5 percent of the time (6 of 11) in November. For those without a runoff, the winner of that extra contest only went on to prevail 46.67 percent of the time (7 of 15) in the Fall of that year, the general election.

What’s more surprising is that in all of the runoffs, 11 in total from both parties, there was only one case between 1992 and 2022 where the candidate who finished first in the primary did not go on to win the runoff. That was in 2008, where current Secretary of State candidate Vernon Jones finished first, but lost in the runoff to former state legislator Jim Martin.

That doesn’t mean runoffs don’t matter or can’t lead to flips. They are far more likely to happen in the general election. Democratic Senator Wyche Fowler finished first in the Senate race but lost in the primary to Paul Coverdell in 1992. Similarly, David Perdue finished first but also didn’t get more than 50 percent of the vote in 2020. He narrowly lost to former Congressional candidate Jon Ossoff in the Senate runoff in early 2021. As for Saxby Chambliss in 2008, he was able to keep ahead of Martin in the runoff, winning by a bigger margin. In both of Rev. Raphael Warnock’s wins, he was able to finish first in the general contest and the runoff, in 2020 and 2022.

It’s worth noting that when you break the results down by party, the Republicans do slightly better when there isn’t a challenge in their party (4 of 6 wins with no challenge, 4 of 7 wins with no challenge). For Democrats, they do better then there is no challenge (2 of 4 wins) than when there is a challenge (3 of 9), which bodes well for Senator Jon Ossoff in his reelection bid, and not as well for the winner of the GOP primary between Congressman Michael Collins and Coach and Lawyer Derek Dooley, but only slightly.

For Senate runoffs, Democrats are only successful two of six times when they have had them, compared to three of seven times when they’ve avoided a runoff. Among Republicans, they have won six of nine times when they’ve avoided a runoff but only took the Fall contest when they’ve had one (two of four wins).

For at least primaries, given the mixed results of runoff for winners in the November contests, and the fact that the runoff produced a winner only once in a party primary, both parties should look into having instant runoffs, where voters can rank the candidates on the ballot in terms of first and second place. Another option may come from Costa Rica, where I recently took my students. In that country, if the frontrunner gets more than 40 percent of the vote, he or she wins, as was the case in their presidential election earlier this year. That may help both parties avoid costly and bitter battles that occur a month after the primary election.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” a thriller novel where corporate greed, media manipulation and academic intrigue collide in a deadly game of product placement, has been published by the Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded).