Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1055882259469864967

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/PoliticsGPB/status/1056168876659105793

The link is video of a long and growing line outside a polling place.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I got a robocall from a candidate in HD-119 on my home landline.   The funny thing is I don't live anywhere close to that district.  It's way over by Athens.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I was just looking at the stats for Whitfield and realized we're getting close to 40% of all voters being those who didn't vote in 2014. I was thinking it might be a Latino thing, but Hall is actually below the statewide average and Gwinnett is only about half as much above the statewide total compared to Whitfield. I hope this bodes well for our local performance; haven't looked to see if there are any other random counties with a higher non-voter share.

EDIT: for what it's worth, there are several counties in the broader region that are hovering at 38-43%. Every other one of these counties is heavily-GOP and heavily-white: ugh.

By CD, GA-1, 6, 7 & 14 have the highest non-voter numbers as of now: kind of a mixed bag overall.

Looking at Georgia Votes, its pretty clear what's going on.  28.8% of whites who have voted early didn't vote in 2014, compared to 29.6% of blacks, 62.1% of Hispanics, and 65% of Asians.  Meanwhile, 77.7% of early voters 18-29 didn't vote in 2014, while that number is 17.9% for those 65+.

Keep in mind that people under age 22 could not have voted in 2014.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Trump will host a rally for Kemp in Macon next Sunday.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Jimmy Carter writes to Brian Kemp urging him to step down.  Full text of the letter here.

[GeorgiaModerate]

On the flip side, my wife voted in Forsyth County on her way to work this morning, about 8:15.  There were zero other voters present.

[GeorgiaModerate]

On the flip side, my wife voted in Forsyth County on her way to work this morning, about 8:15.  There were zero other voters present.

interesting. What is her take on the races on the ballot?

She's usually not too political, but despises Trump.  Hated Kemp's shotgun ads. I'm pretty sure she voted straight D.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1057623835191767040

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'm looking for a breakdown of the proposed constitutional amendments. I believe a Dem poster here (Adam?) did one a while back, if someone could help me find that I would appreciate it. Looking at the sample ballot, some of these are a bit confusing.

Try this: https://www.allongeorgia.com/georgia-state-politics/breakdown-the-5-constitutional-amendments-on-the-november-2018-ballot/.  It gives explanations of the amendments in plain English.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Playing around with data from http://georgiavotes.com/ as of this morning.  Here are the 20 largest counties with their population, their rank of how Democratic they are among counties (1 is most D, 159 is most R), and their turnout increase compared to the same point in 2014.  I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this.

Rank   County   Pop (K)   D rank   Turnout increase
1   Fulton   1041   7   176%
2   Gwinnett   920   36   209%
3   Cobb   756   39   94%
4   DeKalb   753   2   116%
5   Chatham   291   19   88%
6   Clayton   285   1   116%
7   Cherokee   248   126   115%
8   Forsyth   228   129   149%
9   Henry   226   28   117%
10   Richmond   202   9   109%
11   Hall   199   130   107%
12   Muscogee   194   15   122%
13   Paulding   159   100   151%
14   Houston   153   53   122%
15   Bibb   153   16   144%
16   Columbia   152   103   161%
17   Douglas   144   24   104%
18   Coweta   143   105   177%
19   Clarke   127   6   156%
20   Carroll   118   98   163%

[GeorgiaModerate]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

So we're kinda f**ked, in a way?

Seriously, wtf is wrong with my state?

1. Voting isn't over.

2. Abrams is undoubtedly getting some crossover votes, or she wouldn't be in a dead heat in the polls.

3. According to this analysis of the NYT/Upshot polls, it looks like independents are breaking 2:1 toward Democrats this year (obviously, individual states will vary).

[GeorgiaModerate]

Still, after all this time and all the work that's obviously been happening everywhere...it really hits you that Georgia is now a truly competitive state when you remember that Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey and Mike Pence are all making campaign stops in the state in the same 24-hour period.

I just hope it doesn't get stuck in the category of "Always close but never goes D unless it's a really good year nationally" like North Carolina seemingly has.

I could be wrong, obviously, but the massive growth in the Atlanta Metro feels a lot more reminiscent of NoVA than the Research Triangle.

What was the big difference between NoVA and the Research Triangle that prevented NC from turning into VA anyway? It seems like both of them are similarly D, but the main difference is that other metros in VA are swinging D but not really so much for NC.

I mean Atlanta and DC are considerably larger, more established metros than Raleigh

This applies to Charlotte as well.

Charlotte's a lot closer to the Triangle in population than to Atlanta or DC.  Metro populations:

DC: 6.1M
Atlanta: 5.8M
Charlotte: 2.4M
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill: 1.2M

[GeorgiaModerate]

Very informative thread so far I must say, I have a question, why is the "other" share of the electorate double so far what it was in 2014, 12% vs 6%, surely Hispanic population growth is not that rapid, is it just White and Black voters being identified as other.

I believe it's that voters can now decline to specify a race when registering, which wasn't always true.  So previously "others" were actually other groups, but now it includes other groups plus unspecified.  (Adam, please correct me if this is wrong.)

[GeorgiaModerate]

Just voted in Forsyth County.  There were about 30 people in line ahead of me.  It took about 20 minutes, and the line was down to about 10 when I left.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Kemp loses again in court:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Weird:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[GeorgiaModerate]

An Atlanta EV location 2.5 hours after the polls closed last night:

https://twitter.com/TIAreports/status/1058532344099942402

[GeorgiaModerate]

Did anyone see the interview with a Kemp supporter on MSNBC just now? It was ridiculous.

Nope.  Details?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Abrams, Oprah targeted by racist robocall funded by white supremacist group

Same group that did the racist robocall against Gillum in Florida.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I got a pro-Kemp flyer from the NRA in yesterday's mail with the banner "Michael Bloomberg and George Soros are coming for your guns!" with both their pictures.  Seriously.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Why is the Gov and Lt. Gov not on the same ticket?

It could be the case where Abrams wins but not Amico.

In Georgia, candidates for statewide office don't run on a joint ticket.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Anybody who watches ATL media market TV: is this ad running, or is it just online only? Really hoping NGP is blasting the airwaves with this one.

https://www.facebook.com/ngpaction/videos/2228649547147505/

I haven't seen it on local TV.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Kemp, in his office as SoS, has launched an investigation of the Georgia Democratic Party for allegedly attempting to hack the state's voter system.  He has so far presented no evidence to back up this claim.

The AJC's Jim Galloway (generally a pretty objective political reporter) has a scathing article about this:  https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/brian-kemp-november-surprise-show-the-facts-and-make-quick/3jgTq3R4pAQq3x6paQ8PUP/

[GeorgiaModerate]

Georgians: gun to your head, who wins the SOS race?

Barrow.