S6 Ep41: Greg Bluestein: Georgia's Root Canal Primary
The Focus Group Podcast
The Bulwark
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Georgia's primaries for Governor and U.S. Senate have LOTS of things for political nerds (like you, dear listener) to chew on. But the Republican and Democratic voters we talked to felt pretty sick of politics.
Some of what we learned:
- How Republicans feel about their chances against Jon Ossoff in the fall (not good)
- Why a Trump-like billionaire is overshadowing Trump's endorsed candidate for governor
- Whether Democratic voters will tolerate a former Republican Lieutenant Governor running as a Democrat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein joins the show.
By Greg Bluestein:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want to tell you why I love focus groups. |
| 0:02.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:02.4 | Because in a poll, you cannot hear voters do these dejected sighs. |
| 0:07.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:07.7 | The like, I mean, awesome. |
| 0:10.7 | It's just going to like... |
| 0:15.6 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. |
| 0:18.5 | I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark. And this week, |
| 0:21.8 | we are going to Georgia, which has a bunch of fun and interesting primaries coming up on Tuesday, |
| 0:28.0 | May 19th, which is very soon. Now, look, I say fun and interesting, but I think this episode |
| 0:34.2 | is going to be a really funny window into the disconnect between the kinds of, like, political nerds who listen to this show and how regular voters process these kinds of elections. |
| 0:45.2 | Because there's like a really crowded Republican primary for U.S. Senate there in Georgia and crowded primary fields for governor in both parties. |
| 0:54.1 | It's a political nerds dream, but the focus groups made it clear that these primaries felt |
| 0:59.9 | like a root canal for Republicans and Democrats alike. |
| 1:04.1 | Because if you think America as a whole is worn out on politics, man, Georgians are doubly |
| 1:09.3 | worn out. |
| 1:10.5 | The exception is my guest today. He's one of the most |
| 1:13.2 | plugged in reporters in Georgia. Greg Bluesteen, co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast and author |
| 1:19.7 | of Flipped, How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power. Greg, thanks for |
| 1:25.5 | coming back and doing this again. I'm honored to be with you. I was telling Greg, I was like, you got a face for podcasts, man. This guy's a scribbler. Look at this. Look how handsome. All right. Before we get into the show and I tease Greg Moore, go get your tickets to the Bullworks Live shows next week in San Diego on May 20th and Los Angeles on May 21st. I'm going to be there with Tim Miller, Sam Stein, go to the Bullwark.com |
| 1:48.5 | slash events and come hang out with us. I want to come. You should fly out. It'll be a good |
| 1:54.3 | time. I guarantee it. So I want to talk about Georgia's new status as a swing state, uh, because it's making Georgia a very |
... |
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