As Georgia’s Senate race tightens between Sens. Raphael Warnock (D.) and Herschel Walker (R.), the race could come down to who loses the most votes to the Libertarian Party candidate — a former Democrat who supports ending the cash guarantee. cutting police budgets and opening the borders, but is attracting a surprising number of Republican-leaning voters.
Recent polls have shown Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver getting between 3.4 percent and 5 percent in the race, blocking Walker or Warnock from winning a majority. Under Georgia law, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day, the two top contenders must face off in a runoff.
Erik Iverson of the Moore Information Group, a pollster for Walker’s campaign, said he believes Oliver is drawing enough Republican votes away from Walker to have an impact on the race. Iverson said Oliver has been effective in attracting “soft Republican” voters who may associate “libertarians” with conservative-leaning political figures such as Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.). But a review of Oliver’s policy positions and public comments revealed that the Libertarian has much more in common with Democrats than Republicans.
Over the past two years, Oliver has said he supports “ending the cash guarantee“,”closure most overseas bases, and “open borders“He has arguing that he is “more progressive on criminal justice” than Vice President Kamala Harris, DESCRIBED defense spending as “corporate welfare with explosions that kill innocent people” and said he wants “Free and easy immigration”. In another Twitter account, which Oliver appeared to be using around the time he switched parties from Democratic to Libertarian in 2012, he said he supported “single-payer health care.”
Oliver challenged the overturning of the High Court’s decision deer c. Wade AND said that if elected, he would “draft a bill to protect women’s bodily autonomy and codify abortion into law.” He also opposed a law, supported by many conservatives in Georgia, that prohibited students from participating on sports teams that differ from their birth gender.
“A reminder that the Georgia GOP passed a ban on trans sports in class and killed the school choice bill,” he has written on Twitter in April. “School choice is in their platform. But banning trans girls from sports was their education priority. Shame.”
Oliver, who is gay, has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights and DESCRIBED Last month as “the first statewide #LGBTQ candidate in Georgia history!”
In another post, Oliver has written that he does not trust both the army and the police. “I don’t have much faith in all authority structures, chief among them the military and the police because of their nature as institutions,” Oliver said. “They are both that we need to keep more in check to ensure individual freedom.” After the wave of anti-police protests in 2020, he said he wanted to “demilitarize the police” and “end qualified immunity”.
In a 2012 Facebook post, Oliver said he “always identified as a progressive Democrat” and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but decided to vote for the Libertarian Party after becoming disillusioned with Democrats for failing to end wars foreign. He said he made the decision only because his vote in Georgia likely didn’t matter and that he would have voted for Obama again if he lived in a competitive state.
“I live in Georgia, a state that President Obama will not win on election day,” Oliver reasoned. “I live in one of the reddest states in the country, and my vote won’t change that. If I lived in Florida or Ohio, or a handful of other states, I would vote for Obama.”
Polls consistently show Oliver pulling at least 3 percent of the electorate, a particularly significant share given Georgia’s runoff rule. Iverson, the Walker pollster, says he believes Republican support for Oliver is “what’s holding Herschel back now on the ballot.”
“They’re soft Republicans; about 13 percent of them are voting Oliver,” Iverson said. “They think Oliver is a libertarian. He’s really not, he’s a liberal.”
Internal campaign polling shows that neither Walker nor Warnock are close to crossing the 50 per cent threshold in a three-way contest with Oliver, with Walker getting 45 per cent and Warnock getting 43 per cent – within a margin of error of 3 survey points. Oliver is at 5 percent, according to the poll.
Those findings are consistent with independent polls by InsiderAdvantage, Landmark Communications and Trafalgar this month showing Oliver pulling between 3.4 per cent and 4 per cent in the race and neither Walker nor Warnock breaking 50 per cent.
Despite his tweet supporting single-payer health care in 2013, Oliver told Free lantern that he no longer supports this policy and has not for many years. He added that he thinks this leads to “shortages and actually higher prices”.
Oliver said he does not consider his views to be left-wing, calling it a “false left-right paradigm”. He said he also supports a “balanced budget” and gun rights.
“I think when it comes to a lot of issues, I’m actually where most Americans are,” he said. “I think I’m really middle of the road when it comes to things like comprehensive immigration reform.”
Oliver has said he is happy to play spoiler in the race and boasted that the runoff system hurt Republicans in 2020, when both Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff prevailed in the runoff.
“Without a runoff, the GOP would have held 50 US Senate seats after 2020.” has written Oliver on Twitter in June. “Better thank the Libertarian for forcing the runoff ah.”
Oliver told Fox 5 earlier this month, “If I do trigger a runoff, I’m glad it does because it will show that voters are frustrated with both parties.”
“I’ve never been a Republican,” Oliver has written in a tweet in August. “The de facto ex-Democrat who left when the wars never ended and Gitmo didn’t close.”
Oliver said his campaign has worked to push Warnock to take more progressive positions on policing, immigration and drug legalization.
“It surprises a lot of people when they realize I’m pushing Warnock on issues like criminal justice, immigration and the drug war,” he said. has written. “Yes, the Libertarian is more classical here than the Democrat.”
Oliver told him Free lantern he does not know whether he will vote in a possible run-off and has not decided whether to back Warnock or Walker. He said he did not vote in the last runoff. When asked if he believes a runoff would benefit Democrats, Oliver said it would “benefit whichever candidate goes out there and campaigns better.”
“Sometimes, even if something is a historic path, that can be changed by the current election. We see that all the time,” he said.
