Democrats on Tuesday get their best electoral shot to date at humbling President Donald Trump — and public polls show their candidate coming up short.

The special election for a vacant congressional seat in the Atlanta suburbs will be held in a district that Trump barely carried. Democrat Jon Ossoff has raised a jaw-dropping amount of campaign cash from anti-Trump donors around the nation and brought in a ton of Hollywood star power.

“The question is, are Republicans going to wake up and get their vote out?”

Close

Ossoff, a former congressional aide and documentary filmmaker, has tried to make Trump the main issue in the race. The president obliged with a series of tweets this week. He taunted Democrats with a special election victory in Kansas by the Republican candidate.

“The recent Kansas election (Congress) was a really big media event, until the Republicans won. Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!” he tweeted.

[lz_third_party align=center includes=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853771244579282944″]

Trump followed that up with a shot at Ossoff himself: “The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressional race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration, and raise taxes!”

[lz_third_party align=center includes=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853944453538750464″]

For good measure, Trump mocked the entire Democratic Party with a tweet about a blank book.

“A great book for your reading enjoyment: ‘REASONS TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS’ by Michael J. Knowles,” he tweeted.

Ossoff has polled just above or below 40 percent in recent surveys. If he manages to break 50 percent in the 18-candidate field, he will win the seat on Tuesday. If not, he will face the second-place finisher — likely a Republican — in a June runoff. Most observers think if Ossoff can’t break 50 percent Tuesday he could well lose once the GOP unifies behind a single candidate.

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853964023846588420″]

“The question is, are Republicans going to wake up and get their vote out?” said M.V. Hood, director of Survey Research Center at the University of Georgia. “Republicans have been slow, or slower, to galvanize. But that’s happening now.”

The 6th Congressional District has been in Republican hands since Newt Gingrich first won it in 1978. Tom Price, the most recent representative — who created the need for Tuesday’s election by becoming Trump’s secretary of health and human services — won easily every time he ran.

But Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the district by fewer than two percentage points in the 2016 election. Democrats also take comfort from the results of last week’s Kansas special election, where Republican Ron Estes edged an underfunded Democrat by 8.5 points in a district that the president won by 27 points in November.

[lz_related_box id=”760930″]

But Hood said the outcome of one special election does not necessarily predict the results of another.

“I don’t know how much can be read from one special election in Kansas,” he said. “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

Democrats enjoyed a big edge during the first part of the early voting period, but that gap had closed by Friday. Hood said that could be a sign of a late Republican surge. But he cautioned about putting too much emphasis on those numbers, as well.

“Reading the early voting tea leaves doesn’t always end up being what happens on Election Day,” he said.