Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Rookie Yinzer]

The AJC takes a look at the two Georgia counties with the largest partisan shifts in recent years: Gwinnett for the Democrats, Brooks for the Republicans.

https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/meet-the-two-georgia-counties-with-the-state-biggest-partisan-shifts/IW2xbxGHKOpimeIfXvKhiO/

I'm expecting an eye-popping margin out of Gwinnett County in favor of Abrams. The House districts up for grabs along with Abrams's sleek ground game is going to wallop Republican turnout here.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Deal and Perdue (lol @ Mr Racial Gaffe Master standing a chance there now) won Gwinnett by 8 in ‘14. Isakson won it by not quite 4 in ‘16 while Clinton won it by about 6. Could Abrams get it to over 5? Especially with her Latino / Asian outreach? Either way, I see Isakson being the last R to win there for a long time. Especially with Kemp, Trump , and Perdue being on the ticket over the next cycle.

Yes. I believe Carolyn Bourdeaux will win the portion of Gwinnett inside GA-07 by one or two points and Abrams will match or outrun her. Since that doesn't include the heavily black and heavily Democratic portion of Gwinnett that is in GA-04 (where Abrams will massively outperform Hillary IMO), I think Abrams will win the county by more than Hillary did.

Just curious, but what county seats are up in Gwinnett? Just part or all of the county commission?

That particular body seems ripe for some gains.

Districts 2 and 4 of the County Commission and School Board.

In the commissioner's race the Democratic candidates in 2 and 4 would be the first Asian (and openly LGBTQ) and African-American elected in their respective districts.

Also we have several competitive state House races and a State Senate race in Gwinnett.

HD 97 and HD 105 which were won by Trump by 13 and 4 points respectively.

HD 105, 107, and 108 which were won by Clinton by 7, 12, 0.5 points respectively.

SD 48 (vacated by David Shafer who lost his bid for LG) which was won by Clinton by 6 points.

You also have Sam Park (D) defending his seat in HD 101 after knocking off the incumbent in 2016. He won by 4, Hillary won by 13.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1049111907007909888

Not really posting to dissect this, but this never happened before? LOL. Seems like a no-brainer to run ads for Governor when a lot of people from your state would be tuned in.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://youtu.be/ZaWT224ZvN0

[Rookie Yinzer]

Georgia Votes now has a feature that breaks down the vote by each individual county.

For example, here's what it says about Newton County where I live:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

When it comes to gender right now females have outvoted males 59.3-39.2 and by race blacks have outvoted whites 68.4-19.6

So Abrams is more than likely KILLING it here right now.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1049637647738699776

Very impressive considering that the absentee ballots returned so far are skewing old. This is good news for Abrams who in most polling leads in all age groups other than 65+. I think the participation from AA 2014 non-voters will grow as younger voters (18-64) start doing in-person early voting next week.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Wouldn't Obama's 5 point loss (black margins)  + Clinton's 5 point loss (suburbs margins) get you pretty close to a win? This early voting seems like it's fitting into that larger trend.

Obama 08 (non-metro ATL) + Clinton 16 (metro ATL) closes half the gap (50.1-47.4).

I'm assuming Abrams is betting on having abnormally high turnout for midterms among Democratic voters while Republican turnout stays stagnant. Abrams is definitely trying to win counties like Ben Hill, Screven, Meriwether, and Wilkes so if she's winning there one would have to presume she's increasing Hillary's margins in the Metro area and Obama's in rural South Georgia and non-Atlanta major cities.

[Rookie Yinzer]

What percent of the total vote is the early vote/absentee vote supposed to be? If these non-2014 voter numbers can hold up fairly well through early voting (like if the final early votes have non-2014 voters at 30% or more of total votes cast), then we could have a good sense for how good of a night it will be

It was 37% in 2014. The Abrams campaign wants 50% of total ballots to be cast before Election Day which would be on par with presidential years.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I'm not sure what percentage of requested mail ballots usually get returned (and I'm not sure where I might find those stats for previous years), but, there were 107k returned mail ballots in 2014. In 2018 and as of right now, 159k ballots have been requested.

I just got home and saw that the Abrams campaign sent me a reminder to return my ballot. Already turned in but wow at the earnestness of getting each and every vote. She rocks!

[Rookie Yinzer]

Abrams on Morning Joe encouraging the 1.5 million voters who are registered but don't normally show up in midterms to turn out and empower the 53,000 GA citizens whose registration applications are in "pending status" because of the exact-match policy.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1050863473301819398

[Rookie Yinzer]

Lovely sight in Monroe, Georgia.

[Rookie Yinzer]

In my opinion, Abrams should have used her segment on Morning Joe to explain to those 53,000 voters that effectively nothing has changed, and that all they need to do is show their photo IDs when they go vote (as they would have to do anyway). Instead, she spent that time talking about how bad both Kemp and the situation were.

I agree with this! It seems they're banking on it spurring turnout to reject Kemp resoundingly rather than it lowering turnout because people will think the race is rigged for him and their vote won't change it. What I will say is while the 53k are important, the Abrams campaign already has a targeted universe that will theoretically get them to 50% +1. Any new voters registered after the deadline for the May primary were not factored into the equation and would simply be icing on the cake for Abrams in the event that her team succeeds in turning out who they need to.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/gtryan/status/1051295857591627776

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1051523896766279680

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/staceyabrams/status/1051635638448074752

[Rookie Yinzer]

Early voting line in Newton County is all the way down the block. Love it!

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/gtryan/status/1052020560128081920

[Rookie Yinzer]

Assuming the white votes cast are 75/25 Kemp and the black are 90/10 Abrams she is still leading with the electorate being 53/34 white/black. Doesn’t the EV electorate get blacker as it goes on? The first day essentially resembling the usual make up of the electorate already seems positive to me. Someone on Twitter asked the Georgia votes guy the make up of the electorate this time in 2014 and he said it was 69/26 white/black.

[Rookie Yinzer]

There's only one early voting location open at present in Gwinnett, right?

Yes. Six more will open on Saturday.

[Rookie Yinzer]

McBath isn't winning.

I am starting to imagine a scenario where Bourdeaux pulls an upset. Still Lean Woodall.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Racist GA hicks flooding to the polls

LOL. My first thought when I saw the uptick in white participation, but I am not pressing the panic button yet. Kemp has been getting raked over the coals the past week, maybe his people are just anxious to get their vote off their chest. Abrams' field program is not letting their foot off the gas and she has enough money along with PACs supporting her to match him pound for pound on television.

[Rookie Yinzer]

There may be some cannibalization, but there are also a lot of first-time whites coming out as well: in raw numbers, enough to cancel out the gains in this category by the rest and then some.

Can you be more specific about which gains you are referring to in the bolded/underlined part above?

For now, the amount of non-2014 white voters is enough to cancel out the massive gains from non-white voters who did not vote in 2014.

Hoping it is either cannibilization or that these non-2014 white voters skew more Abrams (even if Kemp is winning them decisively) than the white electorate will as a whole.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Another 85k ballots cast/received today. Looks like 78-79k were in-person.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Those Fulton numbers are crazy. They do have 20 early voting locations at present that will be open 7 days a week. I hope more Democrats get to the polls this weekend due to being off of work and Black churches having “Souls to the Polls” events.

DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett will be opening up more locations soon so I hope to see some increase in participation from non-white and younger voters soon.

These numbers statewide are just wild. I can only hope this is Stacey Abrams’s vision coming to fruition.