Dem
47
GOP
53
Roy Cooper (D) pulled in almost $15 million for his Senate campaign in the first 65 days of his campaign. That is a record for a Senate challenger in his or her first quarter. More than 90% of the donations were $100 or less, so Cooper can go back to the well again and again. Also significant is that Cooper pulled in more than double what his opponent, Michael Whatley (R), pulled in. That is not much of a surprise. The folksy Cooper has run statewide six times and won every race. His name is universally known in North Carolina, not to mention well-known nationwide among Democratic donors. Whatley has never run for public office before and is going to need multiple billionaires to prop him up.
The Republicans' usual strategy of finding one minor thing their opponent did or said ("But her e-mail server!" or "Gender-confirmation surgery for prisoners!") and trying to make the entire campaign about that doesn't work well against people who have been in statewide public office for decades and are very well known. It especially won't work well when the Republican is a total unknown and the Democrat is universally known. The Republicans' only hope is to goose Republican turnout enormously and suppress Democrat turnout. The latter may not be so easy with the governor and secretary of state both being Democrats, though.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) isn't doing so badly in the money department either. He raised more than $12 million in Q3 2024. He had 233,000 contributors with an average donation of $36. Nearly 93% of the donations were $100 or less, meaning he can also go back to the well again and again. He has $21 million in the bank now.
In addition to a lot of money, he doesn't have a primary opponent. On the Republican side, two sitting Congressmen, Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, are battling it out, along with a football coach from Tennessee, Derek Dooley. If you look at the map above, you see that Tennessee has a short border with Georgia, so someone from Tennessee is merely carpetbagger-lite. The football guy has an important endorsement, though: Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA). Donald Trump hasn't endorsed yet but when he does, it is very unlikely to be Dooley. This means as it heats up, Trump and Kemp will be helping different guys. That never helps party unity much, especially against an incumbent with a lot of money in his campaign account. Initial polling has Ossoff beating all three Republicans, but that can change once one of them is the nominee. (V)