GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The jungle primary is on April 18, right?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Alyssa Milano and Christopher Gorham (Don't feel bad, I also had to look up who he was) are volunteering for the Ossoff campaign, driving people to the polls.

Republicans should just give up now IMHO

That not reason for them to give up. They should give up because a R-14 district in off year election in the south is remotely competitive.

The republicans in the district are rapidly abandoning the party, as shown by Trump's very narrow margin. This race should have been viewed as competitive from day 1. They reelected Price big because they thought Clinton would win the presidency and wanted to make sure the house could be a check on her. But they're far less inclined to elect a republican now that Trump is in office.

I don't fully agree.  Price would have easily been reelected, but it is different as an open-seat race.  I don't expect someone like Culberson to actually be in danger in 2018.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Also that quote makes no sense. "Ossoff might get 50% in a crowded primary but is unlikely to win the runoff." If anything he's more likely to get 50% in the runoff than the primary.

I could see the argument of Republicans not being ready for the jungle primary with a crowded Republican field but mobilizing better for the runoff.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Ossoff is going to win this thing on the 18th (on my birthday, to make it even worse).  I'm starting to see Republicans starting to point fingers and play the blame game.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

^^^ Better hope that all of those outstanding/likely Ossoff voters are pretty young...

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That age gap is unusually large.  But, that may explain why Georgia had a much bigger age gap than other states in 2016.  Plus, especially in a district like GA-6, youngs are probably mostly non-white.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

^^^ Better hope that all of those outstanding/likely Ossoff voters are pretty young...

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That age gap is unusually large.  But, that may explain why Georgia had a much bigger age gap than other states in 2016.  Plus, especially in a district like GA-6, youngs are probably mostly non-white.

No, whites are a majority in all age groups in the district except 0-4, 20-24, and 25-29.  In those three groups, whites are a large plurarity but not quite a majority.  Source: http://statisticalatlas.com/congressional-district/Georgia/District-6/Race-and-Ethnicity (a wonderful site for demographic information, btw.)

ETA: That's non-Hispanic whites.

Interesting.  So, if 18-34s are roughly 50% non-Hispanic white in this district and the 50% non-white group is voting 90% for Ossoff, the white 18-34 vote would be pretty much split right down the middle between Ossoff and the various Republicans (I'm skeptical of the 71%, but whatever).  Georgia had one of the largest age gaps of any exit-polled states, and a lot of it certainly has to do with racial change, but areas like Atlanta may have a higher than usual age gap right now, even controlling for race.  If Democrats could become competitive with the young white vote statewide (which they aren't right now), they could have a chance to pull out the state.

Now, it may be messy crosstabs or an enthusiasm gap, but it's interesting to try to take a look at this.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I'm amazed how they don't have anything on Ossoff.

Should they? I can’t imagine he’s had time to accumulate many skeletons in his political closet.

He's a millennial, I expected someone to uncover his Reddit account by now.

Plot twist: Ossoff is one of our D-GA posters

[100% pro-life no matter what]

What wing of the Democratic Party is Ossoff from?  Does he have unusual appeal to a district like GA-6 by being less socialist on economics?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The current trends are actually making it seem possible that Ossof might be more likely to win a run-off than the first round. The narrative so far has been that if he doesn't pull off an upset win in the primary, he'll lose 6-8% in the run-off. That could obviously still happen, but the confidence people have been assigning to that scenario is looking increasingly suspect. A run-off might be a lot closer than people are expecting.

You're exactly right - most people aren't considering the circumstances of a runoff that would actually benefit Ossoff.

The families in this wealthy suburban district have tons of sons and daughters attending university outside of the district - and often outside of the state entirely. They'll all be coming home for the summer - and importantly, most will be returning home with several weeks to spare before the runoff's registration deadline! Ossoff's would be able to lock down tens of thousands of new young adult voters for the runoff, especially if he makes a dedicated GOTV outreach to these kids. He would have no problem doing so, given his campaign's ample resources.

Also, if y'all think Ossoff's fundraising hauls are impressive now, there's going to be an insane wave of cash coming in once Democratic activists/donors have a specific Republican to oppose/vilify

Many of those types will have internships in cities around the country anyway this summer.  Plus, I highly doubt the rich (mainly white) young people from conservative families are going to go overwhelmingly for Ossoff (this demographic might be 60-40 R in a runoff, even if Ossoff would easily win the plurality in the first round).

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I could be wrong of course, but if Trump goes full Bush/neocon and basically abandons all of his fake populism and campaign promises, a conservative Southern "educated" suburban area would not be the kind of place where I'd expect to see a strong backlash. These people are probably quite happy with "new Trump" and Gorsuch, the airstrikes, etc.

This could explain a potential underperformance by Democrats here, especially if they do well in other special elections that aren't taking place in the South.

If Trump were to go "Generic R", places like GA-6 and TX-7 and 24 would be among the first to come back.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Trump approval: 54% Approve, 45% Disapprove

Interesting. Like I suspected, these type of voters are exactly the people who love "New Trump".

Are you sure recent actions actually mean anything in this district? I'm not debating your view of what these voters may like about "new Trump," but rather that an older poll of GA-6 from Opinion Savy shows basically the same approvals:

http://opinionsavvy.com/2017/03/24/poll-ossoff-leads-in-ga6-handel-tops-republicans/

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(Mar 24th)

Hmm... interesting. Yeah, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think it's at least fair to say that governing like a generic Republican/Bush 3.0 is not going to him in this particular district. But like Skill and Chance said, I really think this has the potential to backfire on Republicans in the Midwest, the Mountain West and Northeast. GA-06 could very well be too inelastic for the Ds to win, and my wild guess is that the district is full of "RINO Tom-type Republicans" who are still loyal to the party down ballot.

This is one of the many reasons why I don't think a GOP win here would be a good indication of what will happen in 2018.

A ton of those types in Georgia would still be pro-life too, which is conveniently forgotten by the mainstream media (just like it is still not universally accepted that, without the abortion issue, Hillary Clinton would absolutely be the president today).

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I just saw on Facebook that I-20 buckled and had to be closed, at least partially, in DeKalb County.  We will see if they can fix it before tomorrow.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Any weather updates for tomorrow?

Seeing twitter chatter that it will be heavy heavy rain and flash flood warnings from 9am to 9pm.

Atlanta is right on the edge of the system, with 80s and sunshine just to the south and storms just to the north

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The spreadsheet has Ossoff about three points behind his target right now

[100% pro-life no matter what]

How does GA-07 compare to GA-06? Would that seat be as winnable? I'm thinking more for 2018.

GA-7 is somewhat more Republican and didn't trend as hard due to being more exurban.  Plus, incumbent races do not present the same pickup opportunities that open seats do.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

What is with those precincts where Gray came in first place?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

The thing that makes MS so precarious is that it is wholly dependent on white block voting to keep it Republican. If MS whites voted as Republican as they do in neighboring states, it would be a lean Democratic state. There is also the factor that the bulk of those White Republicans are concentrated in the age bracket 65 and above. By 2030, half of those people will be gone. That means that the White Vote is going to naturally trend downward for the GOP over the next several years as 90% GOP Seniors are replaced with 50-50 Millenials starting to vote more frequently.

So 2030 is not at all unreasonable for it to be tilt Dem state.

That might be true if MS white millennials were voting 50-50, but the NY Times demographics calculator said they voted 86 or 88% (I can't remember which) for Romney in 2012.  White millennials as a whole voted for Trump, so they of course voted overwhelmingly for Trump in Mississippi of all places.  If it ever goes Democratic (apart from in a landslide), it will simply be because the black vote outvoted the white vote, which doesn't seem to be that close to happening yet, considering the 2016 results.  There is no NOVA or Atlanta that could anchor Mississippi to a rapid trend like Virginia and, possibly, Georgia.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The number of people on this forum who think Georgia will be solidly Democrat by 2030 astounds me. Sure, it might swing less conservative (same with Texas), but that's because recent ideological trends (i.e.Trumpism) within the Republican party have been less south-centric, and is not because of long-term demographic problems within the Republican party.

The reason I think the 'demographics is destiny' trends assumed for many states here is b.s. is because this assumption is based on two faulty principles:
1. That, because older generations vote more Republican than younger generations, eventually the Republican voter base will die off faster than the Democratic voting base
2. That, because minority populations will represent larger and larger segments of the overall population, Democrats will necessary swamp Republicans with vast majorities within these groups until the end of time

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Number 2 is more difficult to address, as (unfortunately) there is virtually no data on the extent to which 'browness' indicates propensity to vote Democratic, but the basic gist is this: persons who are half-black (such as Barack Obama) currently count as just as much of an African American as someone who is full-black. As America gets browner, it will most certainly get less White - but it will also get less Black. Unless Democrats can find a way to convert similar percentages of quarter-black (or less) persons, both the White voter base of Republicans AND the Black voter base of Democrats will die off, leaving people who are brown but not 'as black' as the Democratic minority base of old.

However, as mentioned previously, there is simply no data on this hypothesis one way or another. People are counted as simply 'black' or 'white' based on how they identify, and there is no clear cutoff point at which someone becomes 'White' vs. 'Black' (or Hispanic, or Asian, etc.). Democrats do tremendously among African-Americans presently, but if in the emerging generation (which will be much more minority than previous generations because many more kids of interracial couples are in it than in previous generations) Democrats do even a bit less well, that would be a big blow to their voter base (though of course the fact that the generation as a whole is less White will hurt Republicans as well).

In other words, Democrats like to talk only about the demographic changes in this regard that will presumably hurt Republicans, while not talking about potentially changes that could hurt their voter base.

While point 2 is not as spurious as point 1 (i.e. there's plenty of data to disprove point 1, and none whatsoever on either side to disprove or prove point 2 yet), I see no particularly strong reason to think that states such as GA or TX (much less MS) will become Democratic within the next decade or two.

Consider this: in this era of increasing polarization, for the past 28 years most states have remained fairly constant in their partisan-order (i.e. if you lined up the states in order of most Democratic to least). Generally, partisan changes in this ordering have been largely attributable to dynamics of individual races (i.e. Trump did not bother appealing to or visiting the Sun Belt while spending all his time in the Midwest/Florida/North Carolina, while Hillary sent both multiple surrogates to Arizona).

Talk of the Democratic party being dead in Minnesota or Michigan (much less Oregon lmao) in 20 years is just as unfounded as talk of Republicans being dead in Georgia or Texas. Sure, a few of these states will naturally flip sides over time, but the progression will be a lot slower than people here seem to think. The Republicans are prohibitive favorites in Georgia and Texas at least through the next decade or two, as they vastly underperformed in both places due to the unique dynamics of a race. While a Democrat could win either in a landslide, neither will be voting to the left of Michigan in the near future.

As for Florida, the demographic changes there don't seem to be benefitting either side, and people here are finally starting to get that. Florida will always be older than the nation as a whole (which will always benefit Republicans unless ideologies flip drastically) but also more diverse (again, which will always benefit Democrats barring ideology changes), and the overall tilt of the state will probably remain slightly Republican for the foreseeable future.

The only true long-term demographic problem I see presently for either party is a simple one: Democrats seem to be more inclined to box themselves into small, densely populated areas, while Republicans appeal more and more to geographically diverse voters across a large majority of the country's area. The constitution is set up in such a way as to value geographic diversity (via providing bonuses to the party which wins more states through additional senators and therefore the electoral college votes those seats in congress represent), and so Democrats will need to find a way to start appealing to people outside of the burbs to win consistently.

Just my (much more than) two cents.

Behold!
http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/georgia/president
That 66-point age gap would explain people expecting Georgia to go the way of Virginia (probably to an even more dramatic extent) in the next decade or so. A large part of it has to do with people under the age of 25 in Georgia being 50% minority, and that number gets bigger and bigger as you get into younger birth years. Now, I don't think the nation as a whole will follow Georgia's rather extreme age/demographic gap, so I'd be hesitant to extrapolate this onto other groups.

There is something to be said for Georgia's extreme age gap (it was one of the biggest in the country) versus states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota which actually had reverse age gaps.  But, Georgia had a much smaller age gap in the Senate race, so it may just be dependent on the direction the Republican Party goes.  I wish we had seen exit poll data for Georgia white 18-34s because it would have been interesting to see how much Clinton improved with them (Obama was only in the low 20s, if I remember correctly) and to see how much of it is an age issue versus how much of it is a racial issue.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Oh, I agree, but if those numbers are anywhere close to accurate, once Georgia flips, it ain't coming back. Even if Republicans did manage to make small inroads with minorities, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to overcome that.

Is there any specific reason we don't have exit poll data like that at the state level? For the national EP, there is data on how voters of different age+racial groups voted, but that is lacking when you look at individual states.

Probably that a lot of the sample sizes would be too small

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

The thing that makes MS so precarious is that it is wholly dependent on white block voting to keep it Republican. If MS whites voted as Republican as they do in neighboring states, it would be a lean Democratic state. There is also the factor that the bulk of those White Republicans are concentrated in the age bracket 65 and above. By 2030, half of those people will be gone. That means that the White Vote is going to naturally trend downward for the GOP over the next several years as 90% GOP Seniors are replaced with 50-50 Millenials starting to vote more frequently.

So 2030 is not at all unreasonable for it to be tilt Dem state.

That might be true if MS white millennials were voting 50-50, but the NY Times demographics calculator said they voted 86 or 88% (I can't remember which) for Romney in 2012.  White millennials as a whole voted for Trump, so they of course voted overwhelmingly for Trump in Mississippi of all places.  If it ever goes Democratic (apart from in a landslide), it will simply be because the black vote outvoted the white vote, which doesn't seem to be that close to happening yet, considering the 2016 results.  There is no NOVA or Atlanta that could anchor Mississippi to a rapid trend like Virginia and, possibly, Georgia.

I couldn't find exit polls showing breakdowns by age and race combined, but the NYT exit poll showed Democrats winning 18-29 year olds and 30-44 year olds in MS by 18 and 8 points respectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

Whether that's due to young whites not being so monolithically conservative as their elders or demographic shifts is a tomato-tomahto issue as either way it paints an optimistic future for state dems as actuarial tables play out, though I suspect it's the former.

That is the national exit poll.  Mississippi was not exit polled this year.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Apparently, Handel's going to free the black slaves from the Democrats

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/politics/kfile-karen-handel-husband-tweet/index.html

The husband of Republican congressional candidate Karen Handel shared an image on his Twitter timeline Tuesday that urged voters to support his wife in order to "free the black slaves from the Democratic plantation."

....

Dear lord. This is... something else.

Dinesh D'Souza has been making that analogy for years now, and it played a prominent role in Hillary's America.  It's nothing new at all.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

A couple anecdotal observations:

-One of my roommates had over a friend from GA-6 who didn't even know what GA-6 was or if she was in it.  It turns out she did live in it and recognized the names Handel and Ossoff when I mentioned them.  I would imagine she either won't vote or will vote for Ossoff based on other things she said.

-One of my coworkers has a good friend (~20-21 year old) who lives in GA-6 and said she voted for Handel and that all of her friends are also voting for Handel.