Talk Elections

Griff's 2002-2018 Animated Precinct Map (Temporarily Down, Sorry!) (https://www.whitdem.org/elections/GA0218.gif)

Electoral Composition by Race/Ethnicity & Gender, 2016-2021 (https://snipboard.io/d9fJFc.jpg)

Know Your History (Election Results):
1988: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1988&f=0&off=0&elect=0)
1990: Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1990&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2) | Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1990&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
1992: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1992&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (General)  (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1992&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3) | Senate (Runoff) (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1992&f=0&off=3&elect=6)
1994: Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1994&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
1996: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1996&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1996&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2)
1998: Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1998&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3) | Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=1998&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2000: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2000&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2000&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3)
2002: Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2002&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2) | Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2002&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2004: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2004&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2004&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3)
2006: Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2006&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2008: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2008&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (General) (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2008&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2) | Senate (Runoff) (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2008&f=0&off=3&elect=6)  
2010: Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2010&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3) | Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2010&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2012: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2012&f=0&off=0&elect=0)
2014: Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2014&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2) | Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2014&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2016: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2016&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=13&year=2016&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3)
2018: Governor (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2018&fips=13&f=0&off=5&elect=0)
2020: President (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2020&fips=13&f=0&off=0&elect=0) | Senate (General) (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2020&fips=13&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=2) | Senate (Runoff) (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2020&fips=13&f=0&off=3&elect=0&class=3)  

Know Your History (Runoffs):

Every candidate in Georgia elections (save for Presidential candidates) must receive 50% + 1 vote to win office. In the event no candidate - whether it be in a municipal, countywide, state legislative or statewide election - receives that amount, a runoff shall be held between the top two vote-getters 4 weeks (in the case of non-federal offices) or 8 weeks (in the case of federal offices) after the general election.

Fun Fact: Runoff requirements have been changed multiple times throughout Georgia history. Until 1993, the threshold for avoiding a runoff was 50% +1 vote. After Wyche Fowler lost his Senate seat to Paul Coverdell in a Senate runoff, the Democratic legislature changed the provision to 45% +1 vote, where it would remain until the GOP took the majority in the General Assembly. In 2005, the GOP majority reverted the runoff threshold to 50% +1 vote, where it has remained ever since.

Another Fun Fact: From 1936 to 1964, Georgia had laws on the books to ensure presidential runoffs would occur if no candidate received 50% +1 vote. In the event of a runoff, the Georgia General Assembly would decide the winner. This provision was never utilized, due to no candidate winning GA with a plurality during this time. This provision was scrapped in 1968 in support of George Wallace, who ended up winning the state with a plurality for the first time in history.

David Shahfer elected Georgia GOP Chair.

A movie and show have already pulled their productions out

Sarah Riggs Amico (Lt. Gov. candidate in 2018) is giving serious consideration (https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/444548-former-georgia-candidate-seriously-considering-2020-senate-bid) to running for the Senate seat next year, citing the situation in Georgia and other states regarding recent abortion legislation.

The South is 100% PRO-LIFE.

I think she's definitely going to get in.

Someone associated w/ Teresa Tomlinson's campaign has been tweeting about her quite a bit lately citing how Amico donated to Romney in 2012 and donated to pro-life orgs as recently as 2016.

Well, no.

From a 2014 Pew study (the most recent I can find with state-by-state data):

Legal in all or most cases / Illegal in all or most cases

AL 37/58
AR 38/60
FL 56/39
GA 48/49
KY 36/47
LA 39/57
MS 36/59
NC 49/45
SC 42/52
TN 40/55
VA 55/42
WV 35/58

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-abortion/by/state/

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/gop-candidate-for-georgia-governor-pleads-guilty-fraud-charges/XlpeqFq7dGMWWawSYCtXwN/

Michael Williams pleaded guilty to fraud. He’s getting 4 years probation, community service, and a fine.

Guessing Kemp doesn't pardon him ?

I think long term the black belt in Georgia is going to be much thinner due to blacks moving to Atlanta, and the remaining whites voting 90% Republican. That one supposedly super safe Dem seat in the SW Georgia black belt might trend Republican long term. The black belt was much smaller in 2016 than 2012.

"Spurred by the anti-abortion 'heartbeat' law, state Democrats launched a new group Tuesday that seeks to flip control of the Georgia House by winning 16 Republican-held legislative seats. (https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/democrats-launch-new-majority-project-initiative-flip-georgia-house/jCeZFQYQJTCEvZCgquFWAP/)"

Technically, there is a path to Dem control of the state house in 2020, but it is extremely difficult:

1) Hold all their current seats, including Bob Trammell's HD-132 (Obama/Trump/Kemp district) and the really narrow flips from 2018 in the north metro (HD-37, HD-48, HD-50 and HD-108).

2) Not mentioned in the AJC article, but flip HD-106 (Snellville). Brett Harrell was unopposed due to Dem qualifying hijinks but Abrams carried the seat by 15 points. This is certainly a Dem flip as long as they remember to run a candidate; no amount of crossover voting will save Harrell with those kinds of top-of-ballot margins.

2) As the AJC article points out, there are 15 districts where the Republican candidate won with 55% of the vote or less, mostly but not completely metro Atlanta seats. The Dems would need to run the table on these seats. In other words, to win control Dems would have to win seats in places like:

- east and north Cobb (Dems have reasonable chances at HD-35, HD-43, and maybe HD-44,)
- north Fulton (chances in HD-49 and HD-52,)
- northern and eastern Gwinnett (they'll win HD-106 and have decent chances at HD-97 and HD-104,)
- HD-109 (Henry/Newton/Rockdale,)
- Athens area (HD-117 and HD-119; the Dems flipped these in 2017's special elections but the super-red lean of Oconee and Jackson counties flipped them back last fall - they'll need extremely high Clarke County turnout to have a shot at getting them back,)
- HD-147 (Warner Robins,)
- HD-164 (Richmond Hill/Fort Stewart/Bloomingdale,)
- maybe HD-179 (Brunswick/St. Simons,)
- The heavily-black but GOP-held seats in SW GA (HD-138 and HD-151; I'm doubtful about these because of the general Dem decline in these areas)

Some of these seats are on the edge of competitive, but that's the nature of the state house map. Note that not all of these seats are in Metro Atlanta; there are parts of Georgia outside Atlanta where Dems are gradually improving, such as Dalton, Gainesville, Athens, and parts of the Georgia coast.

Current characterization of the state house: Very Likely R.

In other words: GA Dems will NEVER flip both chambers of the GA General Assembly anytime soon in our lifetime ?

...

Never? No.

I think Griff's analysis from a few months back is on point (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=299211.msg6542920#msg6542920) (emphasis added):


I fully expect Dems to win statewide offices here by 2022 at the latest (the offices up in 2020 - two of the PSC seats and the Insurance Commissioner - are possible gains,) but there will be lag in the General Assembly, so there will be divided government for a while.

At the very least, there will be no GOP supermajorities in the General Assembly - that ship has sailed - so a future Dem governor won't have to deal with the same flood of veto overrides Roy Cooper had to deal with in North Carolina. On the other hand, a Dem governor will have trouble getting their agenda through the legislature in the first place.

regarding our prospects in the General Assembly, here's a random bit of analysis I messaged Adam immediately after the 2018 election: the number of seats we'd win with a three, five, and eight point uniform swing.

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I know it's all relative but "we'll have a majority if we win every seat where we got at least 42%" was (and honestly still is) amazingly close because I remember a time where the GA Dems weren't even able to run candidates in a majority of seats.

It won't exactly be easy to win the Assembly in 2020 but it' will be both reasonable and good to actually invest in and actually coordinate legislative races statewide for a change -- and honestly this is the one and only chance we have left to not suffer under a GOP gerrymander for another decade so I'm all in

They should still be able to get Medicaid expansion through, at least.  Here in Virginia (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/republicans-who-helped-expand-medicaid-in-virginia-mostly-escape-primary-challenges/2019/06/04/3f7557fe-82fa-11e9-bce7-40b4105f7ca0_story.html?utm_term=.e5e169f9740a), of the roughly 20+ Republicans in the General Assembly who voted for expansion, only three of them got serious primary challengers.  That should send a signal to Republicans in other states, perhaps even Georgia.  

The AJC is reporting (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/doraville-police-chief-replace-indicted-georgia-commissioner/FwBvfjyjDEwrmez8pUvESN/) that Kemp will appoint Doraville Police Chief John King as the state's insurance commissioner to replace the suspended Jim Beck. King will be the first Hispanic row officer in Georgia history. As for his qualifications, he has extensive experience in law enforcement and military operations but no insurance background.

Now, the AJC article notes that Beck is suspended; he has not formally resigned as insurance commissioner. King is expected to be a candidate for the full four-year term in 2022, but should Beck be convicted or otherwise compelled to formally resign, a quasi-special election for the position would likely be held in 2020 as required by Article V, Section II, Paragraph VIII of the state constitution:

Kemp’s going to South Korea for two weeks. Guess he’s gotta go halfway around the world to find anyone who wants to do business with him now.

We have two new developments in the 2020 General Assembly races, one excellent and one concerning for Dems.

1) First, the good: Dems have a candidate for HD-106 (https://patch.com/georgia/snellville/leslie-launches-campaign-georgia-house-district-106). Emily Leslie, a Dem who ran a write-in campaign in 2018, will challenge incumbent Rep. Brett Harrell. The Gwinnett County district was strongly Dem downballot in 2018, and with the Gwinnett GOP dumpster fire combined with the general Metro Atlanta trends, HD-106 is very, very likely to flip. Very Likely D, will probably become Safe once Leslie officially qualifies and assuming there are no redistricting hijinks in the 2020 legislative session.

https://twitter.com/elium2/status/1085752984317935616


2) Now, the bad: the Dems still have some room to fall in rural Georgia. In the same post, I mentioned this:


Well, pro-life groups are targeting Bob Trammell (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/anti-abortion-group-trains-sights-georgia-house-democratic-leader/sVd3SuOEw8q4Cj6xMkTRgK/). As previously mentioned, his seat voted for Obama, then Trump, then Kemp. Trammell retained some downballot crossover appeal in the parts of Meriwether County that have otherwise started voting Republican, but his HB481 vote ("no") has now made him a target. He'll really need to run up the score in Newnan and LaGrange to hold on. Tossup.

https://twitter.com/elium2/status/1113207557496217603

The Dems cannot afford to lose any seats in the state house if they want to win control in 2020. Remember, they need a net gain of 16 seats, and any loss ups the count of seats they need to flip by one.

(Twitter maps are courtesy of @elium2)

What do you think about Senate District 17? Brian Strickland won 54-46 in 2018. I guess how he'll do is dependent on if Abrams 2018 is the new Democratic floor in a high turnout general election. Not sure how Abrams did in this district.

I live in SD-17. I do think it can flip down the road with demographic changes, but as of now it's a bit too red for 2020. The problem for Dems is that the district takes in the entire southern half of Henry - including the blood-red bits in HD-109 and HD-110 - and the entire eastern half of Newton, a part that has precincts that vote GOP by northern-Forsyth County margins.

Since 2012, the margins for SD-17 have been:

- 2012: Jeffares (R)+25.6
- 2014: Jeffares unopposed
- 2016: Jeffares (R)+19.3
- (2018 special: Strickland (R)+27.6*)
- 2018: Strickland (R)+9.0

I'm ignoring the 2018 special because as with HD-111, HD-117, and HD-119, insanely low turnout can make things very misleading. I'd imagine that a contested 2020 race in SD-17 would look a lot like a redder version of HD-109 from last year: it will look closer than expected but still be a decent win for Strickland (probably a 4-point margin). Abrams probably lost SD-17 by high single digits.

The Dems should certainly try to play for SD-17, which they'll be doing anyway considering the Tossup nature of the (somewhat) overlapping HD-109, but I'll have to characterize the Senate district as Likely R for 2020.

Who is thinking about running for Lt. Governor in 2022, remember, we need a Democratic Governor if Abrams is VP in 2024.

Anyone know what the state house margin was? I know we’d have to win probably 60 % to flip it and the senate is worse so best we can do is keep chipping away

If you're referring to HD-109, it was Kemp+190 votes (+0.7%), Rutledge+828 votes (+3.08%). Definitely a tossup in 2020.

Mean the state house in general

Apparently 54.3-45.6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Georgia_House_of_Representatives_elections) (R+8.7), at least if Wikipedia is to be believed.

Seems a little high to me but I guess some Indies in the metro ticket split.

Who is running for Lt. Governor in 2022.

ACLU formally filed the lawsuit against the abortion bill Friday

Fair Fight Action raised $3.9 million since the start of the year:

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/stacey-abrams-voting-rights-group-raises-million-six-months/JupQ020s8Uev9oz2eFOCuI/

https://twitter.com/gwlauren/status/1148417615855017985

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/steve-henson-leader-senate-democrats-won-seek-election-2020/1gbMla3IiH3Flp1dsyQrBL/

He's the only white male D in the senate

Some more Gwinnett news: the incumbent Republican Clerk of Superior Court, Richard Alexander, has apparently opted not to run for reelection.

With the longtime DA (Danny Porter) considering a party switch to run for reelection as a Democrat, and county commission chair Charlotte Nash not running for reelection, the Gwinnett GOP dumpster fire continues to grow. I would not be shocked if the Dems swept every partisan elected county position - district or countywide - up next year.

https://twitter.com/elium2/status/1150620900116635648

At least the Gwinnett GOP is self aware

I’d be shocked if they didn’t sweep every spot. They did in 2018 and none of the countrywide races were even close.

Can Abrams still ask for a recount or sue Gov. Kemp, months after the election?

No and she won't, she'll just continue to raise money from gullible idiots by pretending that the race was stolen from her

Tell that to the federal judges who have permitted discovery to commence in their case against the GA Secretary of State's office for the malfeasance during the 2018 elections.

Uhhh most of the legal action has landed on her side

Yes, just like how John Barrow was the last white male Georgia Democrat in Congress, Henson is the last white male Democrat in the Georgia State Senate.

Kemp's JA is apparently 61/37 according to SurveyMonkey outpacing Trump's 48/51 JA. I don't know what to make of it, but it appears Stacey Abrams election trutherism has fallen on deaf ears in GA.

Simple. Those numbers are inaccurate. Anything else?

I mean it is survey monkey so the SAMPLE could be wrong but even with a weird sample its tough to get a specific sample that shows that many Kemp approves and Trump dissaprovers without it actually being true.

No way Kemp's approvals are that high, nor that 98% of Georgians even have an opinion on the Governor at present.

MC also found Kemp with a +20 approval, though there were far more undecided and they also had Trump at +3

I could see something like 50/30 or 45/25 (maybe even 55/35 given the legislature is out of session and Kemp hasn't been stepping in crap constantly); the margin might be accurate, but the overall share of support shown above definitely isn't at or above 60. Deal's approval numbers outside of the months preceding the 2014 election (and excluding the approval spike in the final year of his tenure) followed a similar trajectory.

Was reading about the plan to spend money on high-speed internet lines to rural GA (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/plan-approved-spend-georgia-tax-money-rural-internet-lines/2ZrQclWsBeGL4afnfVSvUJ/) and it got me wondering just how much of the state doesn't have access to broadband. According to the state's statistics (https://broadband.georgia.gov/), it's around 8% of the population - but the sheer geographic desert where broadband isn't available is pretty astounding.

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Source: Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative, https://broadband.georgia.gov

Hancock County (the blackest county in GA) has virtually no broadband access at all. As does most of the Black Belt in terms of geography. To be fair, though, this shows just how devoid of population most of GA's terrain is becoming in relative terms, given that:


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Source: Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative, https://broadband.georgia.gov

The state has selected a new vendor (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/georgia-awards-contract-for-new-election-system-dominion-voting/tHh3V8KZnZivJoVzZRLO4O/) to provide the new ballot-marking devices that will replace the old and antiquated DREs.

Election Systems & Software, the current vendor, lost out to Denver-based Dominion Voting. Unlike the current DREs, the new Windows 10-based system will print a ballot with the voters' choices once the voter selects their choices on the touchscreen. The printed ballot will contain the voter's choices marked similar to that of a scantron, but the ballot will also contain a barcode that the scanner will read. The paper ballots will be locked away in a ballot box for use in audits or recounts.

The new voting machines, paper ballots, and optical scanners will be rolled out to six counties for use in a pilot program this fall, before the entire state uses them in the March 24 presidential primary.

Personally, this news alleviates most of my concerns (the operating system used in the new machines, whether the printer would print a receipt or a full ballot, the cost of the contract, and the choice of vendor;) that said, I feel that there should be a parallel hand count of the printed ballot papers on election night to ensure that the totals from there line up with what is returned from the scanner reading the barcodes, instead of needing to wait for an audit to do so. Either that or make a full audit mandatory prior to a county certifying its results.

This may be a first: a losing candidate apologizes for running.

Many of you probably already know this story but it's been re-examined in a post-2018 election lens:

https://twitter.com/jonward11/status/1158696979867852801

Isn’t the Georgia State House unwinnable?

It's an extreme Longshot.

Here are my rating for State Houses:
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And State Senate's (CO/NV a Democratic legislator could be recalled, otherwise they would be Safe D)
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It’s not unwinnable, but it’s definitely Likely R.

From a nominal standpoint and based on 2018, Democrats would need to win every seat where the GOP candidate won by single-digits to get a 1-seat majority.

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Geez this state is so polarized. Am I right when I see only 4 districts that were decided by single digits? That's why I laugh when I see people hand wringing about Tomlinson being full throated on impeachment and blowing up the filibuster.

Given State Senate seems have been Kemp 33-Abrams 23, it seems some state Senate districts are represented by a different party from the one they voted for Governor. Also can someone get me info on the current composition of the Georgia State Senate, I have seen both 37 R-19 D and 35 R-21 D.

As far as State House goes and if I recall correctly, there were 16 HDs that were won by the GOP State House nominee by less than 10.0 points; Democrats won 75 seats (+11 compared to 2016) in the State House.

EDIT: oh, you were talking about the Senate. Yes, that sounds right more or less. In many states where legislatures have went from R to D, the Senates have flipped first. However, I think in GA, the lower chamber will be the first to flip of the two. It's not an absolute hard rule, but in GA, bigger districts = harder for Democrats to flip given the sheer polarization and localized concentration of Democratic voters.

It's 35R-21D Senate Districts 40 and 48 flipped last November.

Hopefully (at least) Senate Districts 9 and 56 flip in 2020.

Federal judge ruled today that the state has to stop all paperless voting as of January 1st.

Unscientific straw poll from Whitfield County's Kennedy-Carter Dinner. The vast majority of people in attendance were from Whitfield and Gordon.

(For those wondering, median age was probably ~50 and the racial breakdown was 65% white, 25% black and 10% latino; not at all much different from the national primary electorate)

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And for reference, here are last year's results (taken the same week in 2018):

Are there any GOPers who may run for Isakson's seat?

The AJC reports (https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/breaking-georgia-isakson-resign-from-senate/enj87JHOCYzQmQu0Pj3cnK/) that some potential candidates include:

* Attorney General Chris Carr
* Senate President Pro Tem Butch Miller
* Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan
* Congressman Doug Collins (ugh)
* Agriculture Secretary (and former Governor) Sonny Perdue

They may be appointed by Kemp to serve as a placeholder; they could then decide to run in 2020.

Other names that have been suggested for the seat include Jack Kingston (double ugh,) Nick Ayers (he said no,) and Karen Handel.

Of course, from that AJC list only Perdue could be appointed without triggering some kind of early special election:

* Collins is a sitting congressman. Luckily for the GOP, his seat is Safe R under any circumstances.

* Butch Miller is a sitting state senator. His seat is Safe R, but quirky things can happen with low-turnout state special elections (like that time in 2015 when a Republican won a D+30-ish majority-minority state Senate seat because of low turnout).

* Carr and Duncan are incumbent row officers. Under the state constitution, Kemp would appoint their replacements and quasi-special elections would likely be held in 2020 to elect replacements to serve until 2022.

That was us! Sorry y'all.

Anyway- I hope McBath is the consensus candidate for Isakson's seat.

So I’m in the district with the special house election and I voted last week. Turns out the lady I voted for isn’t even a dem but rather a never-Trumper running as a dem. Don’t know how to feel about it but I guess I need to learn to do my research better and it’s not like she’s gonna win anyway

HD-71?

Yep

Oh wow. I know people who canvassed for her. They definitely didn't know that about her. LOL.

I don’t think I would have voted if I had known this

Just a couple of updates from a very reliable source:

• 15+ "credible" candidates have reached out to the state party in interest over Isakson's seat
• Sally Yates is not interested in elected office at all

I just want to know if McBath is one of them? She's the only one whose potential candidacy excites me.

Yeah... Sally Yates is never going to happen. #ResistanceTwitter needs to let it go. LOL.

Whew! Stacey Abrams & Fair Fight Action just released the most comprehensive case for Georgia being a swing state I have ever seen:

-Georgia is experiencing a population boom, and it is benefiting progressive candidates. For voters who have lived in GA less than 10 years- they voted for Abrams 65-35
-Stacey Abrams tripled Asian and Latinx turnout, increased black turnout by 40%, and youth turnout by 139%
-Stacey Abrams got unprecedented levels of support from college-educated white women.
-As of June 2019, there have been 200,000 new registered voters since the last election, these voters lean Democratic.
-By November 2020, there will be 1.7 million irregular and new voters on the rolls who did not vote in 2018 and are inclined to support Democratic candidates.
-There have been at least 80,000 Abrams supporters identified as victims of voter suppression. She lost* by 54,000.
-Georgia is changing fast, and non-white voters will make up 42% of the voters in 2020 (up from 40% in 2018)

So much more detailed than my cliff notes. Check it out:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1o3D06XqVado9icWfhAw5ylL6KaiBuWSm

Shenanigans!!!

https://flagpole.com/news/city-dope/2019/09/11/weird-winterville-election-results-raise-questions

Lol I love to imagine there being a bunch of secret republicans in Athens

...who all conspired to use the same voting machine. :)

Voter registration surges in Georgia ahead of 2020 elections (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/voter-registration-surges-georgia-ahead-2020-elections/NVKOTit4KEtsTHoXtd6ddN/)

We can win in 2020. We really have to be vigilant about making sure people know their rights at the polls and that they are at the correct precinct. I know where we are, we are fighting for an extra Saturday, Sunday voting, and extended hours the last week of Early Voting. Turnout is going to be insane.

Abrams lost by only 55k votes. I’m sure this surge would net that easily if they actually all vote.

See, this is why I can't see the justification for calling any Georgia statewide race next year as better than "Lean R". Clinton lost to Trump here by 211,141 votes, and as previously mentioned, Abrams lost to Kemp by 54,723. While it's highly unlikely that all 352,000 new voters would vote Dem, if they can keep up the pace in new voter registration it's not insane to believe that Dems could make up the remaining ground from 2016 and 2018 just from new registrations alone.

I actually took a look at the Abrams' campaign's post-mortem document, "The Abrams Playbook", and nothing about the 2020 expectations there seemed unreasonable. One of the big strategies mentioned in the document was registering new voters, particularly minorities and young people; the new registration data seems to imply that such a strategy may bear fruit. We'll just have to see if the Dems can get them to the polls - that's the big question.

Of course, I am neither saying that PresiDem will win Georgia nor that either Senate seat will flip, but I firmly believe that GA is being underrated in general, with some people on this site and in the political/election commentary sphere at large thinking that 2018 was a fluke and that Georgia will revert to something resembling 2012 next year.

Many of these new registrants probably won't vote without some sort of push. They were auto-registered, so while a barrier is now overcome, they still need to be contacted by campaigns to get them to vote.

The questions with regards to the surge of new registrants are of course:

1) What percentage will actually vote? (most of these people are being registered automatically)
2) What percentage of the white vote is Democratic?

Let's assume non-whites are at the standard 85% Democratic and whites (due to age) are at 30% Democratic: that produces a 56-44 Democratic advantage, or a net margin of 42,000 votes for Democrats.

However, assuming that half actually vote (for the time being, I think that's pretty generous actually), you're looking at a 21,000 vote margin gain, which illustrates just why it takes an insane number of new registrants to typically change elections even by a small amount.

And given we're at 7.4 million out of 10.5 million people and 24% (2.5 million) are under 18, we're getting close to being maxed out on new registrants.

Personally I think voting should be e-day only.

Of course you do lol, this is a great point against that view.

There were 1 million new voters on the roll between 2016 and 2018. Even with that, turnout in relation to those numbers went down in 2018. The best candidate in the world couldn't top presidential turnout in a midterm. We need to see how 2020 shakes out with those registrants plus the ones this year and next year when presidential turnout will be closer to 70 percent rather than the 60 percent that turned out last year.

I would be for Election Day only if it were a national holiday. With exceptions for extreme circumstances like work-related travel, or something.

We should be like CO, OR, and WA and vote entirely by mail. It's more convenient, cheaper for the state, would allow people to take their time, and most importantly stop intimidation. The last one is why Kemp and Co. will never let it happen.

There's certainly a lot in flux that can affect things dramatically. I do think that combining 2016 and 2018 performances and turnout can paint a solid baseline picture of where we start for 2020. I did some number-crunching and came up with a base turnout of 4.935 million voters in 2020. That's based on 2016/2018 and also factors in the likely effects of GA being legitimately contested in the presidential race. I then compared that rather simplistically to raw population and how turnout in NC/VA (similarly-sized southern states that are contested by both parties) looked in 2016: both states had turnout equivalent to 47% of their populations, which is almost exactly what 4.935m would be for us as of the latest Census estimates.


This does not factor in any elevated natural national enthusiasm for 2020 (relative to 2016) that might trickle down to GA, any phenomenal shifts in turnout among post-2018 ARVs or shifts in voters flipping from one party in 2018 to another in 2020, but it's a start. It also somewhat underlines my belief that we actually over-performed slightly in 2018 compared to what demographics would have suggested.

Why?

To help prevent some of the democratic voter fraud, and to make voting more of a commitment.

So, you support Mandatory Voting?

Why not the way CA has it set up?

I really just don’t think there should be polling places except for ones where they help people with disabilities. I think they’re a waste of money and time that can be used elsewhere.

Yeah, in-person voting should be abolished for all but a few situations. De-facto party registration should be implemented and the states/counties could cover the postage costs to mail every registered voter a ballot.

After this change, voters receive a card requesting their preferences, with the options being either to fill out the card once to ensure they receive the same party's primary ballot in all future elections (or until changed via local office or online), or that they receive a party ballot for just that one upcoming election (in which case they'll be contacted via the same method ahead of future primaries). Obviously general election ballots would be much simpler.

Ballots can then either be mailed back via postage-paid envelopes or dropped off at secure drop-points in each county.

Most counties in GA are currently spending more than $1 per voter in each election just to operate the physical precincts (primary, primary runoff, general, general runoff). Spending $0.50 to mail a ballot and $0.50 to have it returned isn't a cost-prohibitive procedure.

How about making Election Day a holiday?

Voter fraud is practically non-existent in the US. Voter suppression, based on this myth, is unfortunately very real.

Forsyth County adding five polling stations in 2020:

https://www.gpbnews.org/post/forsyth-county-adds-polling-places-ahead-2020-election

I think this change is going to move me to a new precinct and polling place, although it doesn't matter much because I usually vote early.

You mean so the Republican thugs can keep as many blacks from voting as possible.

A needed development. Somewhat weird for them to backtrack, however: they went from having 22 precincts (through 2004) to 32 precincts (through 2008) to 26 precincts (through 2014) to 16 precincts. Guess the immense population growth has finally forced them to expand once again.

Interesting:

Kemp appoints openly LGBTQ judge to Gwinnett Superior Court (https://www.ajc.com/news/local/kemp-appoints-openly-lgbtq-judge-gwinnett-superior-court/XXOrwp5vNp1ownLBtYCJBK/)

Kemp is going to propose a co-insurance plan in the session in January. Idk why he just doesn't take the medicaid expansion, it makes fiscal sense.  It might even be in his political interest bc he's going to be fighting up hill to win again, he might as well put something big on the board and take away leverage from his inevitable opponent. 

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^^^ To be honest, I don't know exactly how this all works and whether there are outside factors determining these premium reductions and groupings, but...gotta love how the more Democratic areas of the state get grouped into regions where smaller premium reductions will occur. Rating areas 2, 3, 5, 8 & 14 are combined the path of least resistance for congressional and state legislative D majorities. The poorer areas (the poorest of which I'm assuming is 16) largely get grouped into tier 2, while the most GOP areas (many of which are not poor at all; see 10) are in tier 3.

The text of Kemp’s plan came out today. It’s behind a paywall but the gist of it is that it will cost $325m to cover 80k ppl but the expansion would cost ~$200m to cover 500k ppl.

Smh

He’s gonna get killed on this when he runs again and he can’t really afford such an unforced error. He just needs to take the expansion.

Posting this AJC column for selfish reasons (I lived in Dunwoody until 2016):

"OPINION: Should we now call it the city of Demwoody? (https://www.ajc.com/news/local/torpy-large-should-now-call-the-city-demwoody/yTGnMTYyhdBRLXctojCp0K/)"

On that subject, I should point out that the Dems could completely sweep the DeKalb County Commission next year, as Nancy Jester's Dunwoody seat is up for election. There's also a strong possibility of a sweep in Gwinnett County (all remaining R commission seats up in 2020; Abrams won all by double digits) and gaining control in Henry County (currently an even split; chairman June Wood is up next year).

There's an outside chance Dems could gain control of the Cobb County Commission by knocking off Mike Boyce (chair) and Bob Ott (district 2,) but that'll be an uphill battle because district 2 is R-leaning.

Now that Cobb and Gwinnett are gone, I wonder how far behind the other remaining R (mostly south side) counties are. I used to work in Fayette County and my grandparents lived there growing up (my grandmother died in 2013) and it’s def going to trend D. PTC being Mecca for old people will slow it down but it’s super educated and getting more diverse with every year. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2030, there’s no core counties in the area that are R.

Of the south metro counties the Dems don't currently control, I think the order will be Henry (next year) -> Fayette (mid-2020s) -> Coweta (2030s if at all)

I'd be a bit surprised if the Dems didn't knock off June Wood in Henry County next year, considering that's a countywide race. Since the commission is currently split (thanks to Blake Prince's laughable primary challenge to Rep. Dale Rutledge, leaving his District 4 seat open and allowing Dem Vivian Thomas to win 59-41,) a win for Dems in the county commission chair race would give them control. District 1 is also up, but that will be much harder for Dems because it's red-leaning territory; most of the Dems are holed up in Locust Grove and the southern part of McDonough. The lines will probably be redrawn in 2022, but getting a GOP majority on the commission again would be risky, as it would require drawing 3 GOP seats - a tall order considering that the rapid blue conversion of the county has left Republicans mostly holed up east of GA-155, with only a small handful of Republican-leaning precincts west of there. A gerrymandered map would easily backfire like Gwinnett.

Fayette will be next, but it won't be in play for Dems until 2024 or so. The margin will shrink (Kemp "only" won it by 13, the worst performance for a Republican there in quite a while, and it's possible it could be within 9 or 10 points next year,) but it will stay Republican until the middle of the decade - that's the point where I think the Dems will have consolidated its voting bloc in Fayetteville, along the Clayton/Fulton border, and in central Fayette (the GA-54 corridor between Fayetteville and PTC) enough to make the county a battleground. On the county commission, Dems currently control District 4; eyeballing the map they could make serious plays for Districts 1 and 3 by the middle of the decade, along with the at-large District 5. Of course, I fully expect the lines to be redrawn if it looks like the Fayette County GOP is in danger.

Coweta is much further off; I can easily see it staying Republican until well into the 2030s. The only Dem "base" is in the city of Newnan, and even then they're contained to only a few precincts.

Yeah I think the southern and western parts of Coweta are still too rural

In its report on the moving of Glynn County precincts out of schools, The Brunswick News also gave an insight on the new voting equipment (https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/elections-board-votes-to-move-four-polling-places/article_bcbf484c-f1ef-502b-b730-83b2edccd325.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share). While the state won't use the new equipment until March, several counties did pilot the new system during this year's elections.

The report discusses Lowndes County (Valdosta)'s pilot of the new machines and poll officials' impressions of the equipment:

It sounds like Loeffler could be vulnerable to a conservative primary challenge.

Remember it's a jungle primary for the special seat, so things will get weird. If it's loeffler vs Collins vs democrat A vs potentially democrat B vs whomever else might produce unusual results, especially since the jungle is on election night.

I know, what I meant is that her endorsement would likely motivate a more conservative Republican to run against Loeffler in the primary - and it's possible that conservative (probably Collins) could make it to the runoff.

Yeah Kemp can’t really afford to appoint someone who’s vulnerable to a primary.

I finally got around to adding 2015-2018 frames to my longstanding gubernatorial animated GIF (shown below as 2-year & 10-year/second versions).

2014-2018:
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2002-2018:

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1990-2018:

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https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1202738504133988352

This retirement means that Kemp will get to appoint the replacement of Juatice Benham on the Supreme Court, rather than a non-partisan election in March 2020. This means John Barrow’s campaign for GA Supreme Court is essentially done.

Wonder what he does now.

Excellent work, Griffin!

It really reinforces the trend we've been seeing over even the past couple of election cycles where the red areas have become more solidly red and the blue areas more solidly blue. 

Random, but North GA is getting its first snow of the year tonight: about an inch, but none of it is going to stick since it rained all day and it's hovering around 30. Was like 65 degrees this time last night!

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What are the odds Barrow jumps into one of the Senate races now?

0.

He’s not going to win a primary in Stacey Abrams’s Democratic Party.

Anyone knows what's up with this bizarre story?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/16/chattooga-county-georgia-commissioner-wife-dumps-soda-reporter-head/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/16/chattooga-county-georgia-commissioner-wife-dumps-soda-reporter-head/)

Cinyc compiled a map of population changes in every municipality and county since 2010, which you can find here (https://cinycmaps.com/index.php/population-change/pop-change). It's customizable, meaning you can change the scale/steps to make colors more or less intense based on growth/loss.

Anyway, here's Georgia:

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New Georgia poll: AJC/UGA (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ajc-poll-georgians-oppose-ousting-trump-impeachment-trial/0EL17qnjh9HAQfmHNPZ3jM/), Jan. 6-15, 1025 RV

NOTE: beginning with this poll, UGA is now weighting by education (previously it was weighting only by race, age, and sex).  As such, this poll result is not comparable to previous AJC/UGA polls.

Trump job approval 51/48 (strongly: 35/42)

2020: Plan to vote for Trump 44, against him 47

Has Trump committed an impeachable offense? Yes 45, No 50

Regarding removal, I don't like the way this question is framed: "At the end of the impeachment process, what do you think should happen to President Trump? Should he be removed from office by the Senate, or should the voters be allowed to decide his fate in the 2020 election?"

Remove Trump 38, voters decide 58

Favorability numbers:

Donald Trump 47/50
Brian Kemp 55/35 (Kemp job approval: 60/31)
David Perdue 52/30 (Perdue job approval: 51/28)
Kelly Loeffler 23/20
Doug Collins 35/18

Joe Biden 35/57
Bernie Sanders 36/58
Elizabeth Warren 31/55
Pete Buttigieg 22/49

I'm glad they've started weighting by education, but these numbers seem a little too R-friendly to me.

I sincerely doubt that a quarter of blacks disapprove of Joe Biden, or that a fifth of blacks approve of Doug Collins when only 29% dissaprove.

Same.

Our illustrious “governor” was supposed to sit for a deposition over a 2014 voting case in Gwinnett by Jan 10. Wonder when we’ll hear something out of it.

As of last night, 17,337 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

55.4% Democratic
42.2% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.0% Unknown

Not sure why there are so relatively many without a party listed (i.e. the unknowns) and the poor suckers who requested a non-partisan ballot won't have anything to vote on unless there are referendums or special elections in their counties. The 55-42 ratio might look good, but given that there isn't anything on the GOP ballot other than Trump (and/or those special elections in some counties), not very impressive.

As of last night, 20,586 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

54.3% Democratic
43.3% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.0% Unknown

As of last night, 23,088 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

54.2% Democratic
43.3% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.1% Unknown

I’m guessing the people who request early ballots skew black?

I don't have any racial data available statewide, but this early batch I imagine (I hope?) skews somewhat older and whiter. Historically mail ballots were more GOP than the state as a whole, but 2016 and 2018 changed that trend (though if I'm recalling correctly from 2018, the initial round started off very GOP, but became much more DEM as time progressed; Abrams mail campaign).

If Republicans are only down by 12 in a presidential primary with nothing else on their ballot and no contested GOP primary - and this is reflective of the final ballot composition - then I think that's a really bad sign for the general. We saw a similar situation in NH, but the GOP overperformance was far less. It basically indicates that either the Trump campaign is really organized and turning out voters just for a show of force, or these people are so fired up that they're doing it on their own.

*Note: it's possible there are a lot of special elections, SPLOSTs, etc going on around the state and that could be driving some of it, but definitely not all unless all the big counties have issues on the ballot

Yeah I’m really interested to see the raw difference between D & R in the primary.

As of last night, 24,873 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

13582   54.61% Democratic
10685    42.96% Republican
357        1.44% Non-Partisan
249        0.99% Unknown

Wow so it's only getting more D? Hopefully this is a good sign.

As of today, 26,496 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

14591   55.07% Democratic
11256    42.48% Republican
384        1.45% Non-Partisan
265        1.00% Unknown

As of today, 27,754 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

14591   55.30% Democratic
11256    42.10% Republican
384        1.48% Non-Partisan
265        1.12% Unknown

https://www.instagram.com/dekalb_gop/ (https://www.instagram.com/dekalb_gop/)

TIL that the DeKalb GOP has an instagram account. It's about as serious as one would expect the GOP in an 80% democratic county to be.

If we were to use pre-2008 Virginia as an analogy, the Atlanta area is comparable to the Northern Virginia suburbs, and Savannah is like Richmond and its suburbs (as well as Norfolk/Hampton Roads) all wrapped together.  

I suppose that makes Athens like C-Ville or Lexington? Columbus like Roanoke then?

As of today, 32,783 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

18506   56.45% Democratic
13445    41.01% Republican
461        1.41% Non-Partisan
371        1.13% Unknown

Damn, is any recent election this D skewing for early ballots?

No, but there hasn't really been an opportunity: 2004 was the last cycle where these conditions (no contested GOP primary) existed, and Democrats were collapsing statewide hard by then. Also, mail voting was much less common then - I'm not even sure if no-excuse mail voting was available in '04?

Personally, I'm still not impressed with these numbers (and likely won't be until/unless the D share is >70%). If Democrats can't get at least 2 people to show up in a contested presidential primary for every 1 person who shows up to solely rubberstamp Trump in his coronation, then we've likely got big problems.

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As of 2/26, 36,382 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary (11,730 have been returned). Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

20698   56.89% Democratic
14729    40.48% Republican
525        1.44% Non-Partisan
430        1.19% Unknown

60.9% of ballot requests received yesterday were Democratic; 35.7% Republican.

BTW: the "Unknown" category is mostly ballots that have either been rejected or are currently not being issued due to a problem with the application (the overwhelming majority of these are people who didn't check which party's primary ballot they wanted on the application).

As of today (2/27), 38,014 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary (12,885 have been returned). Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

21764   57.25% Democratic
15233    40.07% Republican
545        1.43% Non-Partisan
472        1.25% Unknown

65.3% of ballot requests received today were Democratic; 30.9% Republican.

As of today (2/28), 39,410 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary (14,199 have been returned). Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

22599   57.34% Democratic
15763    40.00% Republican
563        1.43% Non-Partisan
485        1.23% Unknown

59.8% of ballot requests received today were Democratic; 38.0% Republican. Looks like the GOP will cling to the 40% threshold for another day or two.

Early in-person voting begins Monday.

Not much of a change (since it's Saturday; GOP drops below 40 for the first time, though).

As of today (2/29), 39,648 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary (14,387 have been returned). Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

22741   57.36% Democratic
15849   39.97% Republican
570        1.44% Non-Partisan
488        1.23% Unknown

First day of early in-person voting today: 20,002 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) today.

As of today (3/2), 59,650 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

35123   58.88% Democratic
23332    39.11% Republican
680        1.14% Non-Partisan
512        0.86% Unknown

61.9% of ballots cast or requested today were Democratic; 37.4% were Republican.

30,989 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) yesterday.

As of yesterday (3/3), 90,639 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

55831   61.60% Democratic
33436    36.89% Republican
836        0.92% Non-Partisan
536        0.59% Unknown

66.8% of ballots cast or requested yesterday were Democratic; 32.6% were Republican.

Is that good early vote turnout?

Updates for the past 2 days, separated since I didn't post yesterday:

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19,584 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/4.

As of 3/4, 110,223 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

68902   62.51% Democratic
39828    36.13% Republican
914        0.83% Non-Partisan
579        0.53% Unknown

66.7% of ballots cast or requested on 3/4 were Democratic; 32.6% were Republican.

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15,998 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/5.

As of 3/5, 126,221 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

79684   63.13% Democratic
44927    35.59% Republican
991        0.79% Non-Partisan
619        0.49% Unknown

67.4% of ballots cast or requested on 3/5 were Democratic; 31.9% were Republican.

Democratic primary turnout is already 50% of what it was throughout the entire early voting period 4 years ago (160,832); GOP turnout is around 17% (267,413). We still have 12 days of in-person early voting to go.

Hard to say for sure; not a lot of comparison points. It's a one-sided affair this time, there is definitely increased turnout nationally relative to 4 years ago that sort of minimizes anything specifically GA-related affecting it and the last time Democrats were the only party with a competitive primary was in 2004 (before early voting was really even a thing in GA). There's also the fact that early voting just tends to become more popular with each passing cycle.

It's good, but not necessarily indicative of anything, I guess. For Democrats specifically and as I said on the previous page, Democrats want to be in the 67-70% range among the final primary electorate for it to not be a bad sign (or a good sign, perhaps) for November. Democrats are basically hitting that figure each day now that in-person voting has begun. Anything lower and it's basically a sign that the Republican base is fired up more so than the Democratic base.

24,237 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/6.

As of 3/6, 150,458 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

96213   63.95% Democratic
52533    34.91% Republican
1076        0.72% Non-Partisan
636        0.42% Unknown

68.2% of ballots cast or requested on 3/6 were Democratic; 31.4% were Republican.

31,332 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) between 3/7 & 3/9.

As of 3/9, 181,790 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

119487   65.73% Democratic
60423      33.24% Republican
1208        0.66% Non-Partisan
672          0.37% Unknown

74.3% of ballots cast or requested between 3/7 & 3/9 were Democratic; 25.2% were Republican.

That's probably more comfortable territory for democrats.

I'll probably make another one of these once early voting ends (or maybe once all voters have voted; it's a good hour of work per iteration), but here's a map showing which party has produced more votes in the primary thus far.

Lots of interesting (if not entirely relevant) trends to note. Gotta love that Democratic geographic contiguity from SW GA to ATL to the coast; almost resembles an old Dixiecrat map (sans the suburban clusters).

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2016 General Vs 2020 Presidential Primary (EV; as of 3/9)
     ()()

Observations to follow later tonight.

24,576 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/10.

As of 3/10, 206,366 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

137038   66.41% Democratic
67278      32.60% Republican
1302        0.63% Non-Partisan
748          0.36% Unknown

71.4% of ballots cast or requested on 3/10 were Democratic; 27.9% were Republican.

25,299 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/11.

As of 3/11, 231,665 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

155076   66.94% Democratic
74440      32.13% Republican
1379        0.60% Non-Partisan
770          0.33% Unknown

71.3% of ballots cast or requested on 3/11 were Democratic; 28.3% were Republican.

As of March 1, Georgia voter registration is at a new high. Of the estimated 7,493,000 adult citizens in the state*, 6,920,873 are now registered (92.4%).

This number will likely exceed 95% by the November general election.

*Extrapolated based on my own estimates, using the 2018 CVAP figure of 7,303,056 as a baseline

22,390 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/12.

As of 3/12, 254,055 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

171226   67.40% Democratic
80471      31.67% Republican
1436        0.57% Non-Partisan
922          0.36% Unknown

72.1% of ballots cast or requested on 3/12 were Democratic; 26.9% were Republican.

Kemp attempting to cancel State Supreme Court election (https://thefulcrum.us/voting/georgia-supreme-court-election-canceled)

25,363 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/13.

As of 3/13, 279,418 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

190446   68.16% Democratic
86504      30.96% Republican
1516        0.54% Non-Partisan
952          0.34% Unknown

75.8% of ballots cast or requested on 3/13 were Democratic; 23.8% were Republican.

Son and I just early voted in Forsyth County.  We were outnumbered 10-2 by poll workers (two other voters came in while we were there).  We were the 48th and 49th voters there today.  Context: this is a new early voting location and it's raining out.

I like the new machines with the printed ballot and scanner.  Very easy to use.

And yes, we did wash our hands before and after.

Agree. Voted here in Newton County today. In and out.

Presidential primary postponed to May.

Do all votes already cast still count? And will they count them early?

"All votes already cast will be counted in May."

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/georgia-delay-presidential-primary-due-coronavirus-pandemic/0vJZpHlHdPQdPEda6GtvCP/

25,046 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/14.

As of 3/14, 304,464 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

210876   69.26% Democratic
91042      29.90% Republican
1598        0.53% Non-Partisan
948          0.31% Unknown

81.6% of ballots cast or requested on 3/14 were Democratic; 18.1% were Republican.

Is the data for each county available?

Yes: https://elections.sos.ga.gov/Elections/voterabsenteefile.do

You'll need the county list PDF at the bottom of the page to determine which spreadsheet in the zip file corresponds with each county, but each day's update includes the statewide file and individual files for each county.

Georgia is considering sending absentee ballots to all older voters for the May primary:

Let me guess what kind of older voters aren't going to get said ballots.

No reason not to send to all voters. Young voters should be avoiding large gatherings like polling places as well.

How is this not voter discrimination? Everyone should have the same access.

There's no inherent reason (especially with the legislature still in session to approve funding) that they can't mail ballots to all voters for this primary.

With that being said, to do so on a more permanent basis, GA would either need to abolish the concept of runoffs or move to RCV to make it cost-effective. Just as an example, GA was scheduled to have seven elections this year:

• presidential primary & special elections (March 24)
• special election runoff (April 21)
• state/local primary (May 19)
• state/local primary runoff (July 21)
• general election (November 3)
• general election runoff for state/local races (December 1)
• general election runoff for federal races (January 5, 2021)

Even in a non-presidential year, you're still looking at 6-7 elections per cycle (including special elections & depending on whether there's a Senate race), which is untenable. RCV would consolidate this to 3 elections per cycle.

2,240 ballots were cast (in-person) or requested (by mail) on 3/15 & 3/16.

As of 3/16, 306,704 ballots have been cast or requested for the March 24th May 19th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

212488   69.28% Democratic
91623      29.87% Republican
1625        0.53% Non-Partisan
968          0.32% Unknown

72.0% of ballots cast or requested on 3/15 & 3/16 were Democratic; 25.9% were Republican.

Given the primary has been "cancelled" in its original incarnation and merged, we're not likely to get a true snapshot of what the final presidential composition would look like (since the May primary will potentially muddy the waters; I assume there will be two separate ballots, but I'm not sure if voters will still be allowed to pull a D presidential primary ballot and a R local/state ballot per usual, etc).

As such and for now, this is about as good of a final figure as we can expect. Even if people can "split-ticket" in May between the two ballots, there'll be a lot more people who probably choose not to do so who would have on 2 separate election dates, which will give the GOP a relative advantage over what would've transpired throughout the final week of early voting and Election Day voting on March 24.

So I've looked at the outstanding mail ballots - of which there are 30,321. A bigger number than I expected, frankly. Anyway, here is their composition:

20433   67.38% Democratic
8315      27.42% Republican
606        2.00% Non-Partisan
968        3.20% Unknown

Obviously all of the unknown ballots from the daily updates are unreturned, given these are application errors and the like. The large number of non-partisan ballots in this batch isn't surprising either, given there's literally nothing on these ballots in most jurisdictions (only places with special elections will have any contests on them).

What is interesting is the lack of difference between D-R returned/cast ballots and unreturned mail ballots. Historically, a substantially larger percentage of Democrats don't return requested ballots, yet among all ballots requested and cast, there's a 39.4 point Democratic advantage; among unreturned, it's 40.0 points. Presumably this can be explained by the fact that there's no real competitive GOP presidential primary, but still neat to see.

Can one of the Georgia people tell me why we never hear Bob Trammell’s name floated for higher office? I believe he is the only Democrat to represent a seat in the legislature that Brian Kemp won. He fits the profile for a solid candidate for something like Attorney General: young former prosecutor with a track record of winning tough races

He honestly sounds like he would have been a better candidate against Perdue than the lackluster field we have.

So this is garbage, y'all.

Apparently the state is forcing the use of a "combo ballot" for this primary. That means that you will not have the option of voting in the Democratic presidential primary and the GOP state/local primary (or vice-versa) if you haven't already voted: whichever party you pick is the party you get for both primaries (which are one and the same now for this election). Obviously those who have already voted for President will still have the option of picking a different party's ballot that only includes the state/local contests, but this is frustrating.

In counties like mine, you have like 100% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats voting in GOP state/local primaries; the only sure-fire way to identify even some of them is by their presidential primary preferences. This is the case in a lot of counties (especially those where 98% of the population isn't black or white, and where you can't just say "black = D" and "white = R" 90-95% of the time). On one hand, this could force those Democrats to pull a Democratic primary ballot for the presidential primary part and improve our ability to identify them. On the other, given it'll be May when we vote, they may just decide to opt to weigh in on their de-facto general elections in the GOP primary per usual.

Adam, Noob, RFK, GAModerate, anyone?^^

Can't answer that but I can see him running for AG in 2022. I don't think it's a coincidence that he endorsed Kamala Harris for POTUS last year.

Thanks! It’ll be interesting to see if he can survive this year since I imagine Trump will still carry his seat even if he loses Georgia (it was one of the places where Kemp did better than Trump).

Either way, he’ll probably get forced to run statewide for AG in 2022 when Republicans make his seat unwinnable.

So the entire state senate is being ordered to self quarantine after Sen. Brandon Beech got tested for COVID on Saturday and showed up to vote Monday before his results came back positive.

Brandon Beach should be expelled for his negligence.

He's a Republican, so he's safe.

Forget expelled, Beach should be held criminally liable. What on earth was he thinking?

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1241881549513134082

I believe this brings the total to four state senators who have tested positive.

Georgia to mail absentee ballot request forms to all voters for May primary. (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/georgia-will-mail-absentee-ballot-forms-all-voters-for-may-primary/s1ZcJ57g8qqIwyG6LNWfIM/)

SW Georgia is eaten up with coronavirus: 1 in 6 cases (500 out of 3000) and 1 in 3 deaths (32 out of 102) statewide are there, with 339 cases & 26 deaths in Sumter, Lee and Dougherty alone.

To put it in perspective, these three counties have 150,000 people combined, yet Dekalb County (750,000) has fewer cases (294).

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Video is private.

It's crazy how one funeral in the middle of nowhere can be such a hotspot while the ATL counties where the 2nd biggest employer is an airline at the world's biggest airport are doing okay.

Albany is majority black, far away from the Atlanta metropolis, and inadequate healthcare. All recipes for disaster in a state led by racist conservatives who refuse to expand Medicaid.

Georgia primary delayed (again) to June 9. (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/georgia-primary-delayed-again-june-during-coronavirus-emergency/W5ElsYWTsP5clpNAVTYXnO/)

This is a nice development and I applaud the board for implementing it.  Using a drop box will also ensure that an absentee ballot isn't lost or delayed in the mail.

This is amazing.

I wonder if they were afraid of losing a lawsuit. Seems awfully kind hearted for crooked Kemp and co.

https://twitter.com/GAFollowers/status/1252381339837362176?s=20

Keisha Bottoms 2022!

Abrams is clearly over Georgia.

RIP Democrats having any advantage in the primary:

As of 4/21, 653,211 ballots have been cast or requested for the June presidential primary. This appears to exclude the ~350,000 ballots cast prior to the cancellation/merger of the March presidential & May state primaries, which means some/many of these individuals will be duplicates (i.e. individuals who voted in the pres primary before the merger will get to vote again separately for the state contests). As one example, I am on the new state list for my June ballot, but not for my March ballot. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

364464   55.80% Republican
268538    41.11% Democratic
19272      2.95% Non-Partisan
937          0.14% Unknown

Among many interesting questions on the virus response in a new AJC/UGA poll (https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/poll-georgians-back-shelter-place-oppose-rollback-restrictions/I1UrChsuYwyd4BOnqSnEiL/):

I do wonder if the Governors race in 2022 will be Lean D.

Kemp will win reelection very handily by double digits.

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/internal-gop-poll-points-troubling-signs-for-georgia-republicans/hb6wfmQ7sQSkuHKXiipZdN/

Wow, Kemp's overall approvals are underwater, never mind his COVID-specific approvals.

Also, I feel really comfortable with my prediction that Loeffler will not be a senator come January.


Far, far too early to tell. Frankly, I think it would be a tossup based on current trends, but we'll see.


With Metro Atlanta voting the way it is nowadays, even if Kemp wins reelection (a major question mark, even if Biden is president,) it won't be by anywhere near "double digits". The best any Republican governor has done in this state was Perdue's 15-point win in 2006, and the margins have shrunk in every midterm since, red waves included.

Nathan Deal, who was far more popular with Dems and Indies only won by 8 during Obama's Six Year Itch midterm. What you wrote is a fantasy. LOL.

Lol ppl don’t win by double digits around here

have you seen his recent #s

By 2022: people will forget about his poor handling of this crisis.

Even if that is true, there's nothing that guarantees something like a very unpopular budget or something couldn't drag his popularity down big time.

Speaking of which, Brian Kemp warns of "Brutal" Budget Cuts (https://www.gpbnews.org/post/kemp-warns-brutal-budget-cuts-defends-coronavirus-response)

He’s been itching to cut the budget since he got in. Georgia’s economy has been booming as much as anyone’s, but he was determined to come in and cut taxes and cut spending. My department at UGA was ordered to cut 6% from out budget and he ordered a “hiring freeze that we can’t call a hiring freeze” for the entire University System. This was all back in January.

I really wish there was a chance for an upset here. Michael Owens is a good guy and would be a far better representative of the district than "blue dog" Scott ever could hope to be.

Edit: This doesn’t seem to be true so I’m deleting it. Should have looked into it better.  Sorry.

I'm pretty sure this is fake news. This is the shooter:

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Quite obviously not the same person.

Might be a stupid question, but why is Chattahoochee County competitive when it's not a major urban center, has no colleges, and it was only 18.8% black as of the 2010 census? How did Obama win it in 2008 and barely lose it in 2012?

Someone else on discord and I were talking about this 2 weeks ago.
It's a military base county.

Turns out that's not the explanation - the explanation is even weirder: as of the 2010 census, millennials made up 59.7% of the population of the county, the highest of any county in the country.

Again military base lol- which is mostly young men.

General Assembly session resumes June 11; committee meetings can resume June 2.

https://twitter.com/rahulbali/status/1260322874080067593

Meanwhile, Kemp's COVID approvals are...well, let's just say that he's lucky the calendar says May 2020 and not May 2022. Apparently, his COVID-related approval number is 39% (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/many-governors-win-bipartisan-support-for-handling-of-pandemic-but-some-republicans-face-blowback-over-reopening-efforts/2020/05/11/8e98500e-93d2-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html) according to a new WaPo-Ipsos poll, with 61% disapproving.


A few caveats: this is a poll of 219 Georgia adults, undecideds/"don't knows" are excluded in coming to that 39/61 number, and this is COVID-specific, not Kemp's overall approval rating.

Well, yes and no.

There are over 100,000 people working, training and/or living in Fort Benning. That's a huge presence - yet Chattahoochee County only put up around 1,500 votes in 2016. The vast majority of Chattahoochee County (and like half of Muscogee County) land is Fort Benning. The area in red is the part of Chattahoochee where typical residents can be found (currently around 10,000).

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The rest - to my knowledge - are not casting votes in Chattahoochee County unless they work on-base and live in the civilian segment of Chattahoochee as well (i.e. like any normal resident). Even among military turnout, something like 1% of Fort Benning would be unimaginable. Of course, the vast majority are either commuting in from other counties to work or are still registered in their home jurisdictions from pre-deployment/training.

A certain segment of young servicemembers do actually register to vote in the county (whether it be on-base or they live in the non-base segment of the county). In 2016, 18-29 year-olds made up 27% of registered voters (compared to 17% of votes), while 55 and up was 20% of RVs (despite being 37% of voters).

So basically, a large chunk of people voting in Chattahoochee are non-military (or at least "traditional residents", living off-base, owning/renting homes, etc) - but there's also a small number of servicemembers who are registered to vote (and who actually do vote) in the county.

However, the military presence in voting isn't actually that big of a factor here - look at how 18-29s were only 17% of the electorate, as opposed to like 18% nationally. You might be able to argue that the older servicemembers living here are more D than their native Chattahoochee cohorts, but that's a different discussion entirely.

Well, Fort Benning is mostly a training camp so of course, the demographics will be young men but it also prone to large population swings depending on the military budget. I don't think anything can really be read into it.

I don’t feel like doing the math so I hope someone has already done this but if you remove Metro Atlanta how many points did Abrams lose by?

This graphic made me think about that. I find it interesting that Tomlinson didn’t disclose how she performed outside of the Metro. Every Democrat will lose this way but I guess she’s saying she’ll lose by less.

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Depends on what is meant by "metro Atlanta". @InsaneKaine on Twitter crunched the numbers for the Census Bureau-defined version of metro Atlanta:

https://twitter.com/InsaneKaine/status/1161435437354950657

So if we subtract those numbers from the statewide total, I get these numbers for the "non-Metro" result:

- Kemp (R): 942,256 (61.36% of the two-party vote)
- Abrams (D): 593,251 (38.64%)

So the answer, as it turns out, is "pretty badly": Kemp won the non-Metro vote by nearly 23 points.

Geez, wonder what that looks like if you subtract the rural black counties.

If you take the ATL metro and Columbus, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Albany and Athens out of the statewide totals, then Abrams loses by 39 points:

Kemp    809,487 (69.41%)
Abrams 356,726 (30.59%)

Granted, that's only 30% of the statewide vote, but those margins make it very meaningful.


Those counties have relatively few people in them and many were very close to 50/50, with Liberty, Hancock and Macon Counties being the only 3 that netted Abrams more than 1,000 votes. However, If you take out all of the remaining Abrams counties (73k votes total; 57-43 Abrams) from the above numbers, then Kemp's margin expands by another 3.5 points (42-point win):

Kemp    777,708 (71.17%)
Abrams 315,040 (28.83%)

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1262722196314763264

Remember that time when I got a post deleted on here for saying Heil Kemp? You know, because Brian Kemp does not fundamentally believe in democracy?

What is Kemp doing? He's following the same path as McCrory and we all know had that ended.

Kemp makes my f-cking blood boil.

This is not necessary helpful to Republicans.

The seat would be up again in 2022, at which point Georgia would be less Republican/more Democratic.

I’m really starting to not want Abrams to run again and this is part of it. He’s horrendous but I think it’s just gonna turn into a retread.

I hope Mayor Bottoms runs.

The problem is we need a good candidate like a Roy Cooper to go against him, and if there is one thing this year has proved, dems have no bench there

All very interesting, Adam. Great research as always.

However, that still leaves open the question as to why Chattahoochee county is so purple when it's demographics would otherwise indicate it should be solidly Republican?

I don’t think there’s necessarily a bench problem, I just think most of the state legislature talent is still pretty young and none of them wants to make the jump to run for the senate because it sucks.

This is why proofreading is important!

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1265716039477755906

How many Dem ballots have been returned? How has IPEV been?

 Seems like the "hacking" was what we all knew the whole time.  (https://www.propublica.org/article/law-enforcement-files-discredit-brian-kemps-accusation-that-democrats-tried-to-hack-the-george-election)

General Assembly session to resume June 15 (https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1268201411671740417).

According to Georgia Votes, it seems like the two-party race with regards to VBM application ballot requests and returned ballots has significantly tightened, with Dems leading in applications and the GOP maintaining a small lead in returned ballots:

Applied for absentee ballot:
- Dem: 928,719 (49.4%)
- GOP: 884,108 (47%)
- Non-partisan: 67,082 (3.6%)

Returned and accepted absentee ballots:
- GOP: 601,620 (49.4%)
- Dem: 592,680 (48.7%)
- Non-partisan: 21,676 (1.8%)

Will be interesting to see if Dems can take the lead in accepted ballots as some of the biggest counties (*cough* Fulton *cough*) get through their backlog of unprocessed ballots.

611,084 (49.2%) GOP
609,252 (49.1%) DEM

What's really eye popping are the percent of people who did NOT vote in 2016.

And this data, every birth year after 1960 has a majority/pluarlity of voters born that year choosing Dem ballots:
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I imagine Democrats haven't outvoted Republicans in the primary in Georgia since 2008 right?

100 year-old yellow dogs still lighting candles next to their FDR portraits. RIP Greatest Generation :'(

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Sorry if this is the wrong topic, but I figured I would get the quickest response from Griff if I posted here ;).

Anyway, my question is-- How much protest vote is left in rural GA? I remember in 2016 Sanders cracked 40 in most of northern GA and 44 in Brantley (which Kemp won 91-8 LOL). Are we going to see similar amounts of protest voting this time around (controlling for the fact that Biden is the only remaining candidate)?

Why the spike in voters for people born in the late 90s compared to the mid 90s?

First Prez election year and excited to get involved? More likely to live with parents or have had their absentee ballot request application sent to their parent’s house? Parents making sure they get their vote in.

Basically everybody gets auto-registered now in GA (mostly when they pass through DMV). Thanks to this year's universal ABM application campaign, those who are teenagers or in their early 20s are far more likely to actually reside at the address where they first registered when they got their driver's license. If only updating info via DMV, that info only gets updated once every 5-8 years, depending on which license you get. Young people move a lot: the chances of somebody who is 25 still living where they did when they were 18 is much lower than it is for somebody who's 21.

There's also still a wave of people who haven't been picked up by AVR yet (who got their licenses last renewed in 2012-2016) that likely compounds the problem among youngs, who'd be between 23-26 now. That'd suggest that people born between 1994-1997 would be most likely to have the lowest turnout through universal ABM mailings (by virtue of out-of-date VR addresses/not being registered at all yet), which seems to be the case here.  

By your definition: no. Maybe if all of the primary vote had occurred in March (when it was initially scheduled) you could expect a good 30-35% for Sanders in rural North GA assuming the national trajectory at the time (or outright wins had Sanders walked from Super Tuesday with a plurality/majority of delegates), but a solid majority of the Democratic primary vote will have been cast after its rescheduling to June/after the state mailed ballot applications to everybody.

Additionally, there'll be minimal cross-over protest-voting from the GOP since the presidential & state/local primaries were rescheduled/combined on the same day (historically, pres primary is in March and state/local in May); more Ds will probably crossover to vote R than the other way around in the areas you mentioned given local GOP dominance/desire to weigh in on local de-facto GE outcomes in the GOP primary.

So regardless of percentage, I doubt there'll be any real D "protest-voting" in GA this cycle in rural areas - though I'd argue that what you saw in GA in the 2016 presidential primary wasn't "protest voting" given 1) the areas where Sanders did well are dominated by the GOP, 2) there is no party registration in GA and 3) Sanders generally did best in overwhelmingly white areas where a combination of Democratic racial polarization and general strong performance for Sanders among whites was to be expected regardless. Especially in NW GA, a combination of rural white and young Latino voters legitimately gave Sanders their votes out of preference in '16 rather than protest.

If you want to know the "protest effect" in Southern Appalachia, then compare Sanders' performances in North GA to counties across the state line in Western NC (closed primaries there; basically a 10-point margin difference).

That's quite impressive! Hopefully, we'll something similar this upcoming fall.

Dems took the advantage in early voting yesterday.

The spike in black turnout is probably driving that.

https://twitter.com/winwithjmc/status/1270021023962988545?s=21

Georgia is going blue this November.

I could definitely see it being the same as Wisconsin was to Trump. A state that's trending further to tossup status that was deemed fool's gold.

Btw, these Gwinnett County numbers are crazy-

Dem Primary: 52,776 (58.6%)
GOP Primary: 34,804 (38.7%)

If I had to guess the Gwinnett County margin today, I would have guessed Biden +20, even before seeing this stat

Is there a county anywhere in the country that is shifting R > D faster than Gwinnett? I can't think of any.

Williamson County, TX; Collin County, TX; and Hays County, TX come to mind. They've all swung around 25 points from 2012 to 2018.

Other counties in the Metro:

Fulton 78-20
DeKalb 86-12
Cobb 54-43
Clayton 86-12
Douglas 68-30
Henry 63-35
Newton 57-42
Rockdale 75-24
Fayette 50-48 (!!)

I'm surprised Cobb isn't a bigger margin considering the other counties. I also wasn't expecting Fayette to be close to flipping until 2024 or 2028, but who knows, maybe the automatic voter registration there is speeding things up

Will Fayette finally go? The big question.

Where did you get those? Always knew Fayette would be next.

http://georgiavotes.com

I just saw somebody on Twitter say that, so far, turnout for the GA Republican primary in Gwinnett is down 62% from 2016.

My two counties are:


Clarke: 75-23.7 Dem
Harris: 63.2-35.3 GOP

My county.  I'll be bold and predict Trump wins it by less than 2:1 in November.   It was almost 3:1 in 2016 (71.7-24.1).

Statewide margins seem indicative of GA being flippable this year (just like the EV March pre-cancelled primary figures indicated).

Most county margins are utterly useless, unfortunately. Safe D counties siphoning off R voters to decide local primary/de-facto GE outcomes; Safe R counties siphoning off D voters for the same reason. Only the somewhat close/flipping counties where the flip is occurring so rapidly that voters of one party haven't yet begun clustering into the dominant party's primary have realistic numbers (like Cobb, and Gwinnett - but Gwinnett's would be lopsided for Ds too if younger Latino/Asian voters cast ballots at meaningful levels; bit of a coincidence here).

I really wish we could have completed the presidential primary as a separate contest for analysis. This year's is so unprecedented and such a hybrid that it mucks up comparisons.  

That would almost definitely indicate a Biden win statewide

Agreed. I don't think you'll see any insane outliers this time (like solidly-R Clinch County voting 75% Dem in the 2018 primary due to local factors,) so the county map based on which counties vote for which party will look fairly typical for a two-party race in Georgia.

You're right that the margins are going to be inflated in quite a few counties, though. For example, Burke County, even if Biden wins it this year, is not going 68-30 Dem. Likewise, Baker County is not going 90-10 Dem.

Taking a look at even the still-quite R-but-D-trending suburban counties, the margins are insane. Down by 2 in Fayette (Kemp +13)? Down by 8 in Houston (Kemp +17)?

If one just looked at the metros and suburban counties (which are a big part of the state, of course) and guessed on that, they tell a story of Democrats winning by 6-8 points, rather than one where Democrats are up by a half-point; that's only 2 points better margin-wise than 2018 GE. That doesn't even include the smattering of heavily-D small counties like you mentioned as well.

At any rate, it probably balances out overall and the statewide margin is likely quite close to current GE reality.

I would say it tells a story of suburban Dem's being excited and activated, something that has been obvious since Virginia, especially when compared to their republican brethren. Excitement can also explain some of the one-party domination when it comes to their strongholds, since voters are less encouraged to turnout if the only people on your ticket are nobodies who cannot win. obviously this would be a different story if the presidential contests were still relevant, but those are more or less wrapped up.

To be fair, the GOP primary was actually competitive then. Interestingly, Rubio won metro Atlanta in 2016.

Democrats have good leads in districts 6 and 7

This does make sense with the county numbers we're seeing, but where are you finding the data for CDs specifically?

http://georgiavotes.com/ doesn't have any partisan breakdown for CDs unfortunately.

Not sure where that data originates, but I did run the figures myself using the absentee voter file data (updated about an hour ago) from the Secretary of State (https://elections.sos.ga.gov/Elections/voterabsenteefile.do). Unfortunately, I forgot to do returned ballots instead of mailed ballots, so it's worth deducting 1-2 points from the margins here in favor of Republicans. This also excludes non-partisan ballots.

From this, it seems Democrats have a double-digit lead in GA-6 and a very thin lead (~1-2 points) in GA-7 in terms of returned ballots. It's possible extensive campaigning and messaging within the metro has negated the returned/mailed difference (or even reversed it), but without additional confirmation, I'm skeptical.

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Seeing Democrats only ahead by 3.4 points in GA-7 in requested ballots given...

1) 2018 performance (Abrams +1.4)
2) general suburban ballot overperformance of 7-15 points across most suburban counties

...is not the best sign in generic terms.

However, given the very large share of Latino & Asian voters in GA-7 and the fact that they tend not to participate in normal primaries/are more likely to move & therefore miss their ballot applications for this election (*waves from Whitfield County*) isn't necessarily indicative of GE performance either. Pretty sad that my precious Whitfield County has the largest Latino electorate by percentage in this primary (5%), but of course it also has the largest Latino population percentage as well (35%).

Really? Genuinely curious...how did NW Georgia get such a large Latino population?

Textiles, mostly. I expect the Latino population to continue to grow throughout Georgia as more industrial companies move to the region.

I was using a lazy method of extrapolating from the 2018 gubernatorial margins where Democrats had expanded the Gwinnett margin another 6 points and closed the gap in Forsyth another 7.

Sounds like in person voting today as been a disaster. Massive lines, precincts with not enough machines, not enough ballots, machines not working, etc.

Like clockwork.

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1270312105128988684

Wow. This is just an astonishing thread.

You really just went all Dems in Disarray.

Does Ossoff clear 50 tonight?

I'll bet he falls just short thanks to the chaotic process.

Fulton County polls will remain open until 9pm per order of the county Superior Court.

Which means quite possibly everything will be uncounted until 9pm.

https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1270477088513052674?s=20

EDIT: Not just fulton

https://twitter.com/JustinGrayWSB/status/1270472436358799360?s=20

Actually, it might be later than that. DeKalb County will keep one polling place open until 10:10 tonight:

https://twitter.com/ItsInDeKalb/status/1270481778373992450

(huh, I actually used to attend two of the schools on this list, wow.)

Read my entire post, ya dullard.

7:29 and 9:26 are kind of random times to close voting at those two places. I wonder how they decided on that?

Should Riggs Amico come second in the primary, I guarantee that Tomblinson would endorse her to spite Ossoff.

Are the vote totals counting mail-in ballots? A lot of the counties seem a bit light in votes to me based off of the Georgia votes website

Tomlinson bragged about being the candidate to spur Dem turnout in Central and South GA she's in fourth and fifth in a lot of those counties.

Amico is pretty much 2nd in the metro right now. Residual name rec from 2018? Because Tomlinson def spent more on tv, etc.

Endorsements mean nothing... Tomlinson endorsed by Mayor of Augusta and she's in fourth place in single digits.

Waittt.....

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1270562161648115716?s=20

Representative Scott of GA13 looks like he may be heading for a runoff - anybody expected that? And against this person?

https://twitter.com/greggiroux/status/1270569327268442112?s=20

Glorious News! I certainly didn't expect it to happen.


Terrible News! This is what happens when you have next to no formal Democratic committees or infrastructure in SW Georgia. The guy doesn't even have a website, photo or campaign it appears. Still plenty of outstanding vote, though.

Trammell has won his primary, it was called by the NYT with 87% in and Trammell is leading 56-44.


In GA-07, Carolyn Bourdeaux looks very likely to go to a runoff (probably with Brenda Romero). Bourdeaux has 46.2% of the vote with 91% in, all of Forsyth and 91% of Gwinnett is in.

Is this Senate race going to a run off or are there enough votes still out in DeKalb/Fulton to nip this in the bud?

Around 100 precints in Fulton and 70 in DeKalb are left, so it's possible

Still plenty out, but Ossoff's problem is that he's barely beating his opponent (which is the 50%+1 threshold) in Fulton/Dekalb/Clayton, and he's been sitting at like 48% for quite some time after ATL started reporting. I don't know which precincts are outstanding and which aren't, but given Ossoff's numbers haven't been exactly impressive (i.e. meaningful majorities) in most of the other metro counties around the state, I'd lean toward this being a runoff. Ossoff probably benefits more from a surplus of suburban white vote potentially being out there than urban black vote at this point.

Can't be overstated that there are still probably 300-400k votes out statewide, though.

What is your view on the prospects of Keisha Waites in the runoff against Scott?

With regard to GA-13 runoff mentioned above, here is the percentage of the Democratic vote each county comprised in the 2018 gubernatorial election within the congressional district. While this isn't a perfect comparison for a primary, it's still approximate enough to perform some basic assessments.


Since my previous GA-13 post, 10k more votes have dropped. Scott has dropped nearly another percentage point. And here is what each county comprises currently in the congressional primary:


Fulton and Cobb are still way under-represented in reported votes, and these are Waites' two best counties. Clayton is waaay over-represented, which is Scott's best county (and the only one where he has a majority). Douglas and Henry are also over-represented, but Waites and Scott's totals there are very close to their district-wide figures right now.

This will definitely continue to get closer; Scott's dropping below 45% unless mail ballots are very favorable to him. Hell, he might end up closer to 40 than 45 when it's all done.

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She'll be a big underdog, but Scott has done basically nothing during the primary. No campaigning, no debates (Sestak mentioned he hadn't raised any money either?). Many progressive and activist-oriented groups have long had problems with Scott's "blue dog" BS in a 70% Democratic district, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of in-state (and maybe out-of-state) money and energy pours her way - assuming she gets it together.

What's troublesome (as of the beginning of May):


She's since reported raising $875 as of 5/20 (with $0 cash on hand), while Scott had $240,000 on hand. Frankly embarrassing for somebody who served in the General Assembly.

Adam Griffin I raised concern in a different thread about GA-07 being called a runoff prematurely by AP, would you agree with my assessment? It seems like there may be around 23k outstanding uncounted mail-in votes in just the Gwinnett portion of the district (Forsyth has not counted their mail-in votes as well). Considering Bourdeaux's strength in the counted mail-in votes in Gwinnett and relatively strong numbers among early in-person voters as well, I imagine she should be able to exceed 50% and avoid the runoff?

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

Hahahaha!!!

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Raffensperger should be thrown promptly in jail by a Democratic appointed US Attorney if Biden wins. This is criminal negligence.

Literally don't believe any results you're currently seeing on elections websites (especially SoS: not sure WTF is wrong there).

See my post from Monday: there were over 60,000 GOP ballots mailed in GA-7 during early voting alone (and 63,000 DEM ballots mailed), so unless only a little over half of GOP mailed ballots were returned and literally no Republicans voted on Election Day in the district, those numbers are completely wack.

It would not surprise me if Democrats gained momentum from election day voting in a district like GA-7, though: young voters, Latinos and Asians in particular tend to vote more so on the day of an election than early (and certainly more so than via mail). This is why initial returns in many places were more favorable to Sanders before mail ballots started getting counted (also why ED vote in my home county of Whitfield - which has the highest Latino population % of any GA county - more often than not is a bit more favorable than EV; "early voting is for whites & blacks; election day voting is for Latinos and Asians").

It has to be mostly Election Day votes, right? But this number is from both NYTimes and DDHQ, both reputable. GA SOS is way behind everyone else

I haven't been following granular precinct results for most of metro ATL, but given Bourdeaux is now much closer to 45% than 50%, I doubt even mail ballots would save her. I wrote a couple of weeks ago somewhere else how Lopez (Romero) was putting more work into the district than any other candidate in many ways (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=376010.msg7377409#msg7377409), so it doesn't surprise me with her history of mobilizing Latinos in particular that she was able to secure 2nd place. Given Latinos heavily rely upon ED voting rather than EV (let alone mail), I'm sure the mail ballots will be more favorable to Bourdeaux (or at least less favorable to Brenda), but color me skeptical there are enough to clear 50%+1 (unless practically none of the mail ballots have been counted yet).

Ultimately DDHQ & NYT are likely extracting reports from individual counties; whatever hasn't been counted yet can't be reported. So the numbers can be both "reputable" and "completely incomplete".

When you say "it" has to be mostly ED votes, what do you mean by "it"? Of what has reported? Probably; early in-person votes tend to be the first reported, followed by election day votes, followed finally by mail/provisional ballots. I'd say virtually all of the in-person vote statewide is in at this point. We're just waiting on the remaining one-third to one-half of statewide mail ballots to be counted - which are disproportionately likely in the ATL metro.

Many counties had anywhere from 5-10x the number of mail ballots to count compared to past similar turnout elections. Just as an example, my county started tallying mail ballots at 9 AM Tuesday, and finished 13 hours later; in the 2018 general, they started when the polls closed and it took until nearly midnight to work through one-fifth the number of mail ballots we received in this primary. Now imagine you're in a county with many times that number but similar resources.

It would not surprise me if GA-7 had 140-150k voters across the two parties' primaries given population growth and sheer competition in the area once all ballots are counted (which, to address my previous post, would indicate a very large share of mail ballots haven't been counted yet). Those ballots will likely be more favorable to Bourdeaux, but I'm not sure the difference will be enough to matter in terms of 50%+1 (perhaps it could change the 2nd place contestant).  

In Gwinnett County as a whole, Democrats are currently outvoting Republicans 65-35.

Cobb County is smaller but noticeable 59-41

Republicans ahead 52-48 in Fayette County and 68-32 in Forsyth County

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Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

Why didn’t they just void all the March ballots and just start it clean?

I voted in the Presidential primary on the first day of early voting in March, before postponement.  Why should my legitimate early vote be canceled?

Because wouldn’t some people accidentally vote for President twice?

They screened for that on the front-end. I voted early by mail in the PPP as well, and my second ballot only contained the non-presidential primary portions. The fact that my county (and/or many counties, or even all counties) broke this up and have yet to count the PPP-exclusive ballots feels more like an easily-segmented clerical decision to get them out of the office before sunrise this morning.

Again, it can't be overstated: using my county as an example, they never handled more than 1,200 mail ballots in any election (that was the 2018 general). Including the early mail PPP ballots, they had more than 6,200 this time to sort through (5,800 post-merger mail ballots and 400 pre-merger PPP ballots), despite not having any additional manpower to count them. That's why they had to begin counting at 9 AM instead of 7 PM, using both my local party and the local GOP's volunteers as resources to do so. Each candidate/contest choice on every ballot has to be verified and agreed upon by at least two separate individuals in order to be recorded.

Idrk what this says more about: the fact that Waites got such a large percentage of the vote without having raised almost any money and coasting on her name recognition or Scott doing surprisingly bad in a district where it's arguably one of the districts where it's tougher to give an entrenched incumbent like him a run for their money.

By some miracle, hopefully Waites takes this more seriously and she just might win this.

This is brutal for Republicans if replicated in November.

Ossoff is at 49.83 now....

Is that before DeKalb is added?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/us/elections/results-georgia-senate-primary-election.html, Ossoff now at 50%, exact numbers are 50.013%, according to NYT.

This won't age well.

https://twitter.com/teresatomlinson/status/1270753160487993350?s=20

She's giving Karen Handel a race for most incompetent Georgia Senate campaign.

Amazing how she managed to show how awful a candidate she was even on her way out.

Scott at 49.22% with 10 precincts left. Think he narrowly avoids a runoff here to someone with no ActBlue and has raised less than my bank account.

Anyway I’m ready for November. We are at war in GA and it’s time to coalesce now. Tomlinson, go home and run with Abrams as LG in 2022. We are out here fighting for our lives right now.

The GA D trend looks to be accelerating, not slowing down or staying the same.

And there certainly was! It's like every rebellious vote got counted last night and all that was left to count today were incumbency/name rec ballots. Not surprising given mail voters are going to be older; same situation we saw with Sanders %s in most counties before and after mail ballots started being counted last night. However, it was a big difference in GA-13.

Tomlinson just conceded:

https://twitter.com/teresatomlinson/status/1270884602635341824?s=20

So just glancing around - for the Democratic primary alone - it appears there are at least 75,000 votes outstanding in Fulton/Dekalb combined, and potentially 50,000 or more in Gwinnett/Cobb.

On top of that, there are still plenty of counties where mail ballots are obviously not (fully) counted. Forsyth is one example: there should be no fewer than 10,000 D ballots there (maybe closer to 15-20k), yet there are only around 6,000 D presently.

Floyd is another example: only around 1,500 D presently, when it will likely end up in the 4k range.

Several thousand D ballots at minimum haven't been counted in Bibb based on its turnout relative to Muscogee and Richmond.

My estimates based on comparing votes counted by vote type and number of absentees reported as returned:

Fulton has around 20k left, DeKalb maybe around 75k.

Gwinnett around 50k, Cobb 35k.

Forsyth has yet to report any mail-in absentees, around 9k or to there.

Bibb hasn't even included any absentees (mail-in or early in person) in their totals, should be around 17k votes there.

Chatham looks about 25k short too

Well, it looks like the SoS finally caught up somewhat in displayed counts over the past couple of hours (prior, there were only like 600k D votes).

DDHQ shows 829762, NYT shows 829283 & SoS shows 812710. With that update, Democrats officially take the SoS statewide primary lead (https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/103613/web.247524/#/summary):


With 104,000 votes difference between presidential and senatorial, those pre-cancellation Feb/Mar PPP ballots likely haven't been fully counted by all (or most) counties yet, which likely explains the margin difference between the two contests. Democrats might win the ballot count by >5 points once everything is counted.

Looks like one or more bigger, GOP counties' post-March mail ballots came in over the last 12 hours: 31667 new votes via SoS, with almost 60% of them being Republican.

In the PPP totals, there was a GOP gain of 18904 votes and a DEM gain of 12757 votes. Given the widening of the PPP/SEN totals (from a 104k difference to 108k), these almost certainly were not pre-cancellation ballots.

Another hour and a half, and a big Democratic dump. A total of 41,002 new votes in the presidential primary (31,238 D, 9,764 R) and 46,502 new votes in the senatorial primary (36,026 D, 10,476 R). PPP/SEN primary gap widens from 108k to 113k. They're still counting just post-March mail ballots, apparently.

Since last update:

8576 new PPP ballots:
+4788 D
+3788 R

8965 new SEN ballots:
+5026 D
+3939 R

I wonder if that Senate gap can grow to 100k

OK, so the status shown via SoS is a bit confusing and counterintuitive, but I think I've deciphered what it means.

The counties in green (47) have completely finished counting all results: ED, AIP, post-March ABM and pre-March ABM.

The counties in purple (100) have completely finished counting all Election Day vote, but have not completed their mail ballot counts (or even potentially EV, though that's almost always counted first by counties).

The counties in yellow (10) apparently have not finished counting neither their Election Day ballots nor their mail ballots.

Not sure what's up with Jasper and Echols; glitches, presumably. It's also possible that pre-March ballots are not included for the "completely reported" status, as they were technically for a different primary/on a different day and so may be treated in a separate category by some/all counties when measuring this status.

This doesn't include provisional ballots, which cannot be finalized until after close of business on Friday.

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Definitely possible. If there are 100k outstanding ballots or more that lean 2:1 D, it'll happen. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still 100k Democratic ballots (excluding the PPP-only ones) left to count; may be closer to the 75k range at this point, though. The yellow counties above tell a broader story of where the bulk seems to be remaining.

Democrats ahead by just over 15% in GA-06 now. GA-07 has fallen to 58-42 D

Assuming I haven't made any mistakes...

Comparing last night's absentee spreadsheet to current SoS votes in Gwinnett, there are still another 60k ballots outstanding in Gwinnett.

Gwinnett Early Vote/Mail Ballots Accepted (via SoS Results):
DEM: 23558 (59.30%)
GOP: 16165 (40.70%)

Gwinnett Early Vote/Mail Ballots Accepted (via SoS Absentee Spreadsheet):
DEM: 61364 (60.41%)
GOP: 40209 (39.59%)

Which means, outstanding...

DEM: 37806 (61.12%)
GOP: 24044 (38.88%)

Bourdeaux is still running pretty strong, holding steady at winning 67% of the mail-in absentees. She's gone from 46.0% -> 47.0% in overall margin from the last 3000 votes added.

I dunno if places like Coweta and Houston are complete, they aren't sharing the results with anyone.

Alright--Coweta just updated.

Up to 48.7% after Forsyth absentees, seems like I was correct to say the AP called this race prematurely.

Oh wow. If the AP called this many races prematurely here in Georgia primaries alone...

This is going to be a nightmare in November. A lot of premature calls are going to go for Republicans before Dem-heavy Counties finish

Hopefully the press learns from their mistakes here, and the expected mistakes in the coming weeks. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me and all that.

I'd imagine the AP might take more precaution in November to not prematurely call races. I don't have too sharp a memory of prematurely called races but I know the AP was forced to retract their call in CA-21, which should've been some sort of a warning that there is a fairly large margin of uncertainty for contests with considerable amount of absentee vote.

Of course it's necessary to address the larger scale issue of establishing infrastructure to ensure that a large number of absentee ballots can actually be counted before election day, hopefully states like Georgia and Pennsylvania use this as some sort of a lesson for November, and other states which have not held primaries under similar conditions to take notice as well. The AP might be better at not calling races prematurely, but it won't stop the VBM truthers from expressing doubt over leads potentially changing days or weeks after election day.

Yeah, it looks like Bordeaux will likely avoid a runoff. Thank god

Yeah, Bourdeaux's got this.

Y'all think GA-07 will zoom to the left of GA-06 in November? Will Bourdeaux win by double digits?

Based on sheer demographics alone (even when excluding or factoring in post-'16 white GOP suburban flight), GA-7 is to the left of GA-6 and has been for several years. This was why I actually postulated in one of the 2018 GA GE polls pre-election on here somewhere that GA-7 could vote to the left of GA-6 in 2018; based on population alone (and even VAP), it should be voting more Democratic.

Of course that didn't happen - but the gulf in electoral difference (less than 1.5 points margin-wise) relative to polling wasn't anywhere nearly as large as many forecast, either. There are also many more non-citizen Latinos and Asians in 7 compared to 6 that negate a big chunk of that demographic difference.

Still, Latino and Asian turnout will ultimately be the key. As I pointed out a few days ago, the GA-7 D/R split in requested ballots was only 52/48 in favor of Ds (compared to 56/44 in GA-6) - which I thought was potentially concerning (but also not necessarily unusual, as lower-propensity voters tend to stick with ED voting as opposed to EV/ABM; less confusing for those not accustomed to long-term voting). Apparently, a lot more D voters returned their ballots in GA-7 than R voters relative to requests for us to have basically a 60% D mail electorate in 7, along with similar ratios across other forms of voting. I imagine a disproportionate share of Latino and Asian voters used ED voting - as they will in November - but there must have been an utter collapse in returned white GOP ballots/surge in white & black DEM ballots returned.

Anyway, yeah: could definitely happen, as I thought it was a possibility in 2018. It might even be more likely than not. Even if GA-6 in the aggregate is "anti-gun", I'm not convinced McBath was the best fit for the district. In some alternate universe, McBath and Bourdeaux get swapped between their respective districts and both probably won in 2018 (and in McBath's case, by a small amount more than in reality).

Wow.

https://twitter.com/jmilescoleman/status/1271529941084114944?s=21

Cobb County Commission chair Mike Boyce (R) calls for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "take responsibility" for the state's primary election issues or resign (https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/cobb-absentee-ballots-000-down-000/l3RShceTnSR1FK7cpl8wDN/):

She's now at 49.81%.

PPP/SEN gap continues to grow - now at 120,384. Democrats slightly lost ground in percentage terms since my update from yesterday.

Adam, do you have a guesstimate as to how many PPP-only early ballots may still be out?

How many votes are left?

Well, we know the maximum: there were just a tad over 300k ballots cast or requested prior to the cancellation; presumably a decent share (i.e. 20-25%) weren't returned as-is. Given there's a 120k vote gap between PPP and SEN total turnout, it seems that is the floor: in the aggregate, it's unlikely in a state like GA that many would skip the top contest "because it's over" or whatever and then proceed to vote downballot. Given the metro is where most of the population and incomplete returns tend to be, I doubt there are more than 150k outstanding statewide. I expect - given unreturned PPP pre-cancellation ballot likely counts - that the discrepancy between PPP and SEN will start narrowing now, presumably reaching parity (or even a slightly higher PPP total than SEN total) in the coming days. However, this extensive use of mail balloting changes things a lot in conjunction with the irregular nature of this year's primary, so I can't say with absolute confidence.

Haven’t seen it posted here, but Dems took the lead in Fayette County by around 1000 votes

Does anyone have a link to the results on the SOS website?

https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/103613/web.247524/#/summary

#BURBSTOMPIN

Wasn't sure if I should post this here (because Georgia) or in Political Geography & Demographics (because mapping), but since this is related to a currently-unfolding race in Georgia I decided to post it here.

So I finally took the time to learn QGIS, and felt like making a map. It's not to push any particular agenda, but because I thought it would make a good exercise. Since a lot of attention has been on the U.S. Senate primary, I decided to make a map of the metro Atlanta two-party vote in that race as it stood as of noon today. Of course, that means that by the time you view this there will be more votes counted, but I don't expect the margin to change much.

Now, there are a few caveats, and I'd like to point them out here before getting to the map:

1) With David Perdue being unopposed (hence why the map says "Sen. David Perdue" instead of "Republican candidates",) the main action is, of course, on the Dem side. Georgia is an open primary state and there's no party registration, so anyone can vote in whichever party's primary they'd like. As a result, there are some inflated Dem margins in some of these precincts. Notable examples include:

- the Brookwood High cluster in Gwinnett County. The map makes it appear as if it's completely collapsed and its voters fleeing to Dems, but I suspect some Trump/Perdue-leaning college-educated Republicans did take the plunge and vote in the Dem primary even though they still plan on voting for Perdue and Trump in the fall. I expect the Brookwood cluster will look redder in November, but not by that much - the once solid-red cluster really softened in 2016, Abrams poked quite a few holes in it in 2018, and the cluster is filled with the kind of college-educated voters and soccer moms that are probably willing to give Biden a look this fall. Perdue will outrun Trump a bit here, but I wouldn't count on it looking like it does on this map for Trump/Biden and looking like, say, 2014's GA-SEN map for Perdue/Ossoff.

- The Bethel precinct in Rockdale County. While I do think it's possible the Dems will sweep the rest of the county in November, this precinct north of I-20 and north of downtown Conyers is more rural in character, more conservative, and (in turn) much redder. It's shown as blue here, meaning that there is some Dem strength, but judging by the insanely close margin and the precinct's avoidance of the rapid demographic changes seen in Conyers down to the Henry and Newton county lines, I suspect it will vote for Trump and Perdue by a decent margin in November.

- Atlanta City Council District 8, basically everything in Buckhead west of Peachtree Rd. and north of I-75. This area is filled with wealthy, conservative-leaning, old money types who form the "Republican base" in the City of Atlanta. It didn't even go blue for Linda Miller in the 2018 PSC district 3 runoff, which stands in stark contrast to her near-sweep of Sandy Springs next door. I work in Buckhead, and from personal (commuting) experience I did notice a lot of Teresa Tomlinson signs - right next to a bunch of signs for conservative-leaning judicial and county government candidates.

As a result, I do feel that the two-party margins here are inflated somewhat. However, there aren't many weird outliers (like a 70% GOP precinct voting 60% Dem), so I don't think the margin is that far off, and I feel that view is in line with polling that suggests this will be a tight race. Despite the obvious deeply red/blue counties (Forsyth, Fulton, Cherokee, Clayton, DeKalb, Rockdale) where the primary election basically is the election, counties like Cobb, Henry, Newton, and Gwinnett are still - for the moment at least - not so far gone, so I don't think there is a significant amount of tactical "mess up the other party" voting going on in those counties. In fact, outside of the areas I just mentioned this map looks an awful lot like GA-GOV 2018, only a bit bluer.

2) This map is just for the main counties of metro Atlanta, not the (significantly redder) counties outside of it. There's both Dem and GOP strength outside of here, especially in Georgia's other cities (Dem) and in Hall/Bartow/Paulding/Coweta (GOP) - but there's a lot more GOP strength than Dem strength. It's telling that this nearly 70-30 map of the metro would only translate to a narrow Ossoff win statewide IF this was perfectly replicated in November and IF he avoided a runoff.

There's some oddities in south Fulton, but that's because I had to swap shapefiles: for Cherokee, Forsyth, Cobb, Douglas, DeKalb, Fayette, Henry, Clayton, Rockdale, Newton, and Gwinnett, I just used the shapefiles on the General Assembly website. However, the shapefiles there date to 2018; Fulton County changed around precincts in 2019, particularly in Milton. Luckily, despite all the crap we give Fulton County for its competency at running elections, they were kind enough to put an updated shapefile on their GIS website (unlike Paulding, who added seven new precincts and don't appear to have an updated shapefile freely available). However, there were some precincts with no voters and some precincts with no votes; they're gray on the map. Also, since the Fulton shapefile is different from the shapefiles provided on the General Assembly website, it doesn't perfectly line up with its neighbors - this is most visible in its county line with DeKalb.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the map. Unfortunately, I used non-Atlas colors. Sorry. The deep blue (Atlas red) here translates to a two-party margin for Dems of 40 points or more, while the deep red (Atlas blue) translates to a GOP margin of 40 points or more. Any precinct that appears very light gray literally comes down to a couple of votes.

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I see that the front runner in the GA-14 R primary is an open QAnon supporter.  It's a 75% Trump district so the winner of the runoff will go to Congress.

The only potential silver lining if she wins is that GA14 is gonna be forced to stay mainly in the NW of the state in redistricting if the state GOP wishes to protect her from an educated exurban primary challenge. Or perhaps they will desire to facilitate that and be forced to waste exurban red voters ousting her.

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k: now at 122,841. Maybe a bunch of people did skip the presidential contest, but a 6% undervote seems way too high. There still surely has to be tens of thousands of PPP-only mail ballots to be counted.

I thought the SOS site says none of the PPP-only vote has been added.  It's been counted, but not added.

here's the WaPo article btw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-republican-and-qanon-believer-favored-to-win-us-house-seat/2020/06/11/f52bc004-ac13-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

Good to know! I guess they added that disclaimer yesterday. Of course when I looked a few minutes ago, I only read the first sentence!

This is my district. Don't make me get started on this. Her dumb Cobb County ass (who doesn't even live in the district; maybe she moved after announcing her campaign, I don't know) is going to lead to the NW Georgia district getting sliced into pieces in 2021 if nominated in the runoff. While there's no way a Democratic member of the US House wins an election with NW Georgia in it, I do at least appreciate all of the effort that NW GA GOP officials put into ensuring that the new 14th district (at the time) was a geographically compact, mostly (ugh Paulding) culturally-relevant district drawn here in 2011. I could be wrong, but I imagine if this cretin wins, the GAGOP at-large will split this area three ways to Sunday in redistricting to flush that turd down the electoral drain (as multi-millonaire Frank Reynolds once said (https://youtu.be/G6aHDsNZF4U?t=79)).

Why is there any reason to believe that they are interested in primarying our conspiracy theorists? Republicans haven’t cared about their politicians openly peddling conspiracies in the Trump era at all. In fact, they are often rewarded by the voters for doing so (Trump)

skbl17 and Grif, how would you rate Senate District 17's race? Kelly Rose is shaping up to be a formidable candidate but Brian Strickland is Kemp/GOP's golden boy and clearly being groomed for bigger things down the line. They're going to go all out to protect him.

I'm leaving Covington (Newton County) and probably moving to McDonough, so will probably be voting in this race.

Maybe Tilt R? I'm reluctant to say it's a toss-up, even if the trajectory of the area suggests it very well could be. Trump won it by 15.7 in '16, while Kemp won it by 6.5 in '18. However, Strickland probably will continue to overperform the top of the ticket by a couple of points in addition.

So it was basically 10 points to the right of the state in '16 and 5 points to the right of it in '18. That's some major movement; obviously if the trends held, Democrats would be favored (or at minimum, the district would vote in line with the state - before factoring in any Strickland/incumbent advantage).

The real question in districts like these is one I've had since 2018: how much of Abrams' improvement was her basically pulling an Obama and cashing in demographic shifts earlier than expected (i.e. where Obama lost by 5 in '08 and it took eight years for another Democrat to replicate that margin), and how much is consistent demographic shift that will continue? Obviously SD-17 is close to ground zero for black suburban growth in the area over the past decade, but I don't know enough about the area's population shifts over the past 3-4 years at a granular level to say with absolute certainty.

Worth noting that Democrats currently lead Republicans 54-46 in the primary in SD-17 (measured by State Senate primary totals rather than PPP/SEN - might be wider by those metrics). Of course, this district is contained within 3 (more or less) reliable Democratic counties now and will naturally begin attracting a greater share of GOP voters pulling DEM primary ballots than the other way around. This has probably already happened in Rockdale, but is just starting to ramp up in Henry and Newton.

Because of this and perhaps due to other factors, I'm hesitant to assume that the large shifts in D/R ballot shares in the primary throughout suburban ATL are actually indicative of impending GE performance anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio. It's hard for me to believe that Democrats will be getting in the mid-to-high 60s in places like Gwinnett, Douglas and Henry come November, so I think some of this is indicative of variations in turnout competitiveness (Trump and Perdue were uncontested, Democrats had competitive races for both contests if but in name only) and indicative of a general realignment of the area's primary voting behaviors as counties flip from R to D.

Despite this, it's still a good sign. Obviously the district should be treated as a toss-up in every metric from a Democratic organizational standpoint (manpower, money; regardless of chances).

I actually don't live in SD-17 anymore lol, but HD-35 (Ed "Heartbeat Bill" Setzler) and SD-37 (Lindsey Tippins).

Anyway, while it's true that SD-17 contains parts of two reliable-Dem counties (Rockdale and Henry), I wouldn't call Newton "reliably Dem", at least not to the same extent as Henry. Newton County has barely budged in the last few years; the sheer size of the AfAm population means that Newton tips Dem in a normal year, but in low-turnout races, the GOP can and does still win it. Stacey Abrams actually did slightly better in Cobb County than she did in Newton.

Also, the parts of the Henry and Newton counties that overlap with SD-17 are the reddest parts of their respective counties. The heavily-black portions of Newton and Rockdale are in SD-43, for example; most of the Newton precincts inside SD-17 were Kemp+30 or better in 2018, while Henry's SD-17 precincts were more split but still Republican-leaning thanks to the inclusion of virtually every Republican precinct east of SR 155.

What that means for the fall, I dunno. With the competitive HD-109 being almost completely contained inside SD-17, I'd imagine the Dems will ensure there's a lot of campaigning going for both Regina Lewis-Ward (HD-109) and Kelly Rose. I'd probably classify SD-17 as Lean R due to the nine-point gap the Dems have to make up, but I can see the argument for tilt R.

Meanwhile, I can see the argument for HD-109 being Tilt D (although I'd keep it as a tossup out of a sense of caution). The portions of that district that are in Rockdale and Newton are Dem as of 2018, and everything west of SR 155 in Henry County is either blue or swinging blue. Even the east-of-155 precincts are moving in a more pink direction; don't get me wrong, they're still Republican, but not Trump+40 Republican. Rutledge was reelected in 2018 by an 828-vote margin: that will not be difficult for Dems to overcome so long as they remember to turn out.

I think the sheer margin Dems are out voting Republicans in the primary isn’t getting the proper attention it deserves. Democrats are now leading by over 6% in the Senate results, or over 125k. All the more notable because the Democratic base generally are much lower propensity turnout demographics compared to the GOP’s, especially in Georgia

A lot of folks won't take it seriously until November 4 and then claim they knew all along. I can't wait.

How many pickups will Democrats have in the GA legislature this year?

Unfortunately, not enough, and that's probably all that will matter.

In short:


In the 180-seat state House, you need 91 seats for a majority. Dems hold 75, so they need a net gain of 16.

In the 56-seat state Senate, you need 28 seats + the lieutenant governor for a majority (29 without him). Dems hold 21, so they need a net gain of 7 and hope to beat Geoff Duncan in 2022, or win 8 if they don't want to worry about that.

Even if the Dems hold all their seats in the state House, they would need to run the table on all of the seats the AJC marked as being won by Republicans in 2018 with 55% or less of the vote, plus gain HD-106 in Snellville, which returned Brett Harrell unopposed but voted for Abrams by double-digits upballot. That would get them to 91, but it would require the Dems to play everything 100% perfectly, and even then that might not be quite enough.

For example, some of the seats the Dems would need to win are in rural Georgia, in areas that are shifting away from them. Some of the metro Atlanta suburban seats may shift left but stay narrowly Republican, such as HD-44 or HD-49. Deborah Silcox and Sharon Cooper may have just enough moderate street cred left to survive in their top-end Perimeter seats. Add in HD-151's Gerald Greene (R) being quite popular with the voters of his rural Obama/Clinton district, and I can't get the Dems to 91.

I can get them to the low 80s, but it's a stretch for me to see the Dems winning more than 82 or 83 seats. Very, very Likely R, but for all intents and purposes it's practically Safe R.

The state Senate is absolutely Safe R without question. The Dems could get a few seats (SD-9, SD-17, SD-56), but they'd still be four or five seats short of a majority. To win control, they'd need to win seats that are R+20 or better. Not happening.

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 8k since yesterday: now at 130,676.

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Somewhat related, this means that the SD 17 primary composition is now only about 1.2 points to the left of the statewide SEN primary composition (no new votes from SD 17 since yesterday).

How many state house districts did Stacey Abrams win? And what is the tipping point district based on Abrams's performance?

78:

I think based on 2018 HD results alone, the tipping point district was one of the ones in Houston County. Not sure about which one based on Abrams' margins, though.

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If 2018 was R+8.7, in theory the needed 10 point uniform swing would be D+1.3, which is a doable presidential margin but giving how right the state voted downballot, that seems only doable in theory. Also isn’t that gap from the high profile races versus state legislature races more ancestrally Republican than other fast trending D metros?

After reading Speaker YE's post, I decided to look into how the primary numbers in state House races looked.

As of 1am the partisan primary split in the state House primaries is 92-88 GOP. The statewide vote breakdown is really close:

- 869,858 D (50.5%)
- 852,917 R (49.5%)

When this megathread was first started, I made a post (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=320535.msg6825138#msg6825138) indicating the kinds of districts Dems would need to win for control of the state House. Here's the current partisan primary breakdown in each of those districts:

Seats I said the Dems must hold:

HD-132	4,955 D (51.8%) - 4,614 R (48.2%)	D+3.6%	Minority leader Bob Trammell's seat
HD-37	6,136 D (54.8%) - 5,066 R (45.2%)	D+9.6%
HD-48	5,164 D (59.8%) - 3,471 R (40.2%)	D+19.6%
HD-50	5,310 D (63.4%) - 3,062 R (36.6%)	D+26.8%
HD-108	6,095 D (58.2%) - 4,375 R (41.8%)	D+16.4%

So for now, it appears that the metro seats are in good shape. Bob Trammell looks like he'll survive his primary, but the primary numbers still leave room for concern.

How about Brett Harrell (R) in HD-106?:

HD-106

8,415 D (64.2%) - 4,698 R (35.8%)

D+28.4%

Yeah, he's done for in November; as I said, he only got lucky in 2018 as the Dems' own qualifying hijinks cost them a place on the ballot in this double-digit Abrams seat in south Gwinnett. Oddly enough, the write-in candidate from 2018, Emily Leslie, is losing badly in the Dem primary.

Meanwhile, the Dems have to run the table on these GOP-held seats:

HD-35	6,464 D (56.8%) - 4,920 R (43.2%)	D+13.6%
HD-43	6,216 D (51.0%) - 5,963 R (49.0%)	D+2.0%
HD-44	6,199 D (49.6%) - 6,297 R (50.4%)	R+0.8%
HD-49	5,716 D (57.3%) - 4,264 R (42.7%)	D+14.6%
HD-52	6,720 D (63.7%) - 3,823 R (36.3%)	D+27.4%
HD-97	6,270 D (53.0%) - 5,571 R (47.0%)	D+6.0%
HD-104	7,091 D (57.8%) - 5,180 R (42.2%)	D+15.6%
HD-109	8,538 D (58.3%) - 6,108 R (41.7%)	D+16.6%
HD-117	6,483 D (50.4%) - 6,376 R (49.6%)	D+0.8%
HD-119	6,305 D (45.5%) - 7,566 R (54.5%)	R+9.0%
HD-147	4,108 D (48.6%) - 4,342 R (51.4%)	R+2.8%
HD-151	7,054 D (66.1%) - 3,626 R (33.9%)	D+32.2%
HD-164	3,850 D (55.0%) - 3,148 R (45.0%)	D+10.0%
HD-138	4,276 D (49.3%) - 4,391 R (50.7%)	R+1.4%
HD-179	4,507 D (42.3%) - 6,140 R (57.7%)	R+15.4%

Assuming the Dems hold all of their seats, winning all of these seats would get them to 91 seats - a slim majority. Most of these seats are in metro Atlanta, but several are not: HD-117 and HD-119 are in Athens, HD-138 is in west Georgia, HD-147 is in Warner Robins, HD-151 is in southwest Georgia, HD-164 is in Savannah, and HD-179 is in Brunswick.

Now, you may think, "hold on skbl17, if you add up all the seats here that Dems are leading in, they only get to 86 seats!" To be fair, that's still a bit above where I have them getting to in November anyway, and also, it turns out that there are two other seats that weren't on my radar because I didn't think of them as competitive:

HD-47	5,126 D (50.3%) - 5,072 R (49.7%)	D+0.6%	Speaker pro tempore of the House Jan Jones's seat
HD-110	5,591 D (49.1%) - 5,804 R (50.9%)	R+1.8%

That gets the Dems to 87 seats. Finally, there was another seat I missed in my original June post: HD-145. It's currently held by a Republican, but this Milledgeville-to-Eatonton seat is still reasonably competitive, as Baldwin County is a swingy-but-Dem-tipping-in-good-Dem-years county, and this seat contains all of Baldwin plus a bit of Putnam (up to Eatonton). The primary results reflect the competitive nature:

HD-145

5,280 D (51.6%) - 4,963 R (48.4%)

D+3.2%

Now, winning every seat listed here would get the Dems to 94 seats, three more than they need for a majority. I do think some of these seats are still quite a reach for Dems though. HD-179, for instance, is only on the very fringes of competitive (and will in all likelihood be off the board for Dems come November,) and I still have serious doubts over seats like HD-117, HD-119, and HD-151. Also, some of the seats where Dems have very slim leads (like 1 or 2 points) are probably close enough that it could be chalked up to the competitive nature of the top-of-the-ballot races versus the coronations on the GOP side, combined with Georgia's open primary system. However, one thing I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be many results that would be owed to rural ancestral Dems (aside from, perhaps, the aforementioned HD-151) - seats like HD-138 are narrowly R, but you'd think that it would be D due to, say, local county-level races. Who knows.

That said, the door to House control is cracked ever so slightly; the question is whether or not the Dems will go all-in and make a play for it. I still say the state House is Very Likely R, but I'll back off from the move I made earlier to Safe R. You could even make a fair argument that the state House may be a strong Likely-but-on-the-cusp-of-Lean R if you were feeling particularly bold.

I assume the fact that Ga has an ungodly number of house seats and counties are somehow related.  Also, why is HD-179 on the list?

On the subject of counties, I don't think the numbers are related. The common refrain in Georgia is that we have the number of counties we have because the idea was for farmers and those doing business in the county seat to be able to travel there and back within one day by horse and buggy.

I'm actually not sure about why we have 180 House seats tbh.

As for HD-179, back in June when I made my original list, I noticed that the HD-179 result in 2018 seemed closer than I would have expected. HD-179 is anchored in the city of Brunswick, so at the time I thought that in the right conditions, and with the right candidate, it could poke its nose into the competitive board. I was probably jumping the gun, even though it does seem as if Dem prospects in coastal Georgia are slowly improving.

Honestly, I would have swapped 179 for 145. Can't believe I forgot about that seat!

Note: my memory may not be serving me on every detail here, so catch a grain or two of salt.

From the late 1800s until the 60s, Georgia had what's known as the County Unit System. Because rural counties received a new State House member each time a new county was created under the system, legislators began creating a slew of counties prior to the Great Depression to ensure rural interests remained represented in Atlanta and that urban, Republican and black voters could not take over (I want to say something like 30-35 new counties were created from the 1890s-1920s).

The County Unit System at its end had 121 "rural" counties, 30 "town" counties and 8 "urban" counties. Rural counties each had 2 votes/units, town counties 4 votes/units and urban counties 8 votes/units (i.e. statewide votes in primaries and the like were weighed in such a way that a handful of counties with a few thousand people could offset a county with tens or even hundreds of thousands). Each county had a minimum of 1 State House rep, which was only tangentially related to the broader CUS, but it's still a variable. Technically the system didn't exist for statewide general elections (only for primaries), but given the Democratic primary was the de-facto GE...

When the system was abolished in the 60s, the number of State House members was never scaled back. It was later constitutionally capped at 180.

Here's the current Senate primary turnout by county (map + spreadsheet):

2020 Senate Primary Turnout by County (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-x69Kbf8YdXjg5HU_w5iPrOCH4MOYGveQYhjHp8LyVE/edit?usp=sharing)

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