Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Skye]

Writing's on the wall...

I don't get the point of this chart. Is it possible the Democrats can win in GA? Sure enough, Abrams almost did, and the D-trend in metro Atlanta is definitely a terrible omen for the near future of the GOP establishment in GA. But it basically estimates what? A terrible first term for Kemp? Another open seat election? Another blue wave year? There are too many variables are at stake. And it conveniently left out the 1998 and 2002 results.

For all we know, Kemp could become a governor with decent approvals who gets a weak challenger and wins easily his second term.

[Adam Griffin]

I don't get the point of this chart. Is it possible the Democrats can win in GA? Sure enough, Abrams almost did, and the D-trend in metro Atlanta is definitely a terrible omen for the near future of the GOP establishment in GA. But it basically estimates what? A terrible first term for Kemp? Another open seat election? Another blue wave year? There are too many variables are at stake. And it conveniently left out the 1998 and 2002 results.

For all we know, Kemp could become a governor with decent approvals who gets a weak challenger and wins easily his second term.

The projection is based on an average assessment of all elections to take place under the new coalitions. All of the factors you've mentioned have been present in one or more of these recent elections.

Going back beyond 2006 is pointless because the Georgia Democratic and Republican coalitions that existed then are substantially different than they are today; 2006 was the first true cycle of the new order of things. Georgia also doesn't need a national climate of any particular type for Democrats to make gains, as history shows. In 2006, the climate was a great national climate for Dem gains; it was Democrats' worst year in the state ever. In 2 consecutive red-wave years, Democrats continued to improve performance relative to the previous election. The only thing the national climate did this cycle I'd argue is elevate turnout across the board, which rendered any "blue wave" effects meaningless (we had 95% of 2016 turnout).

It's Georgia, not Massachusetts. The only thing that matters in determining outcomes of elections is the white and non-white shares of the vote; literally the single biggest predicting factor in voting in the state (save for self-identified partisan affiliation - and it ain't far behind even that). We've made gains every cycle because the electorate becomes less white with each passing cycle. The demographics over the next 4 years will move apace like it has over the past 4 years. It's doubtful that the state will shift as much in the next 4 years margin-wise as it did between 2014-2018, but even if it's a measly shift along the lines of 2010-2014 (i.e. with a halfway popular incumbent in a red wave year), we're hovering at a majority.

[Adam Griffin]

And I've made mention of it already a few days ago, but given the top line turnout estimates and exit polling we've seen thus far, I remain highly skeptical that the increased Democratic campaign efforts had any statistically significant positive effect on this year's outcome. In other words, this latest improvement may just be organic gains (or even a downright under-performance).

Even if Abrams et al mobilized Democratic voters above and beyond what would have happened, they couldn't manage to do it in a way that didn't proportionally stir up GOP voters as well (or else we wouldn't have had 3.95 million votes cast, compared to 4.1 million in the presidential). I guess we'll see in a few weeks when detailed turnout data is available.

And Georgia hasn't even been touched yet by legitimate Democratic investment in presidential campaigns, which always leave a lasting impact on voter registration, turnout and participation in general.

[Tender Branson]

Despite losing, Abrams got a really good result after all.

More votes than Hilldog and Obama in 2008 and 2012.

She almost got 3x the votes of the last Dem. Governor of GA, Barnes, in the 1990s.

As the chart above shows, it was probably the last time the Rs held the Governor if the Dems run a good candidate again in 4 years.

[Rookie Yinzer]

And I've made mention of it already a few days ago, but given the top line turnout estimates and exit polling we've seen thus far, I remain highly skeptical that the increased Democratic campaign efforts had any statistically significant positive effect on this year's outcome. In other words, this latest improvement may just be organic gains (or even a downright under-performance).

Even if Abrams et al mobilized Democratic voters above and beyond what would have happened, they couldn't manage to do it in a way that didn't proportionally stir up GOP voters as well (or else we wouldn't have had 3.95 million votes cast, compared to 4.1 million in the presidential). I guess we'll see in a few weeks when detailed turnout data is available.

And Georgia hasn't even been touched yet by legitimate Democratic investment in presidential campaigns, which always leave a lasting impact on voter registration, turnout and participation in general.

Huh? Abrams is going to end up with the most votes for a Democrat in the state’s history. That didn’t happen on its own. There are several metro counties that she got more votes than Hillary and Kemp got less votes than Trump. That was organizing and door knocking. I do agree that her candidacy riled up the other side.

[Adam Griffin]

And I've made mention of it already a few days ago, but given the top line turnout estimates and exit polling we've seen thus far, I remain highly skeptical that the increased Democratic campaign efforts had any statistically significant positive effect on this year's outcome. In other words, this latest improvement may just be organic gains (or even a downright under-performance).

Even if Abrams et al mobilized Democratic voters above and beyond what would have happened, they couldn't manage to do it in a way that didn't proportionally stir up GOP voters as well (or else we wouldn't have had 3.95 million votes cast, compared to 4.1 million in the presidential). I guess we'll see in a few weeks when detailed turnout data is available.

And Georgia hasn't even been touched yet by legitimate Democratic investment in presidential campaigns, which always leave a lasting impact on voter registration, turnout and participation in general.

Huh? Abrams is going to end up with the most votes for a Democrat in the state’s history. That didn’t happen on its own. There are several metro counties that she got more votes than Hillary and Kemp got less votes than Trump. That was organizing and door knocking. I do agree that her candidacy riled up the other side.

There's no doubt she flipped a small segment of metro voters (and not just in ATL) and/or turned out a few new people, but the turnout differentials (or lack thereof) statewide suggest it wasn't as big of a deal as many were expecting. Basically, both parties turned out their presidential electorate and Abrams benefited from a handful of defections. However, this also happened to varying degrees in every competitive state in the country. Even some of the more niche statistics that seemed impressive initially - like mail ballot returns - ended up being mediocre (adjusted for raw turnout, there were only a few thousand more mail ballots this election than we would have expected for an election with this many voters).

The areas where she gained are the same areas where Democrats gained virtually everywhere else in the country (improvements in metro areas; the same reason we now have the House and won several seats we weren't even expecting), so who's to say this wasn't just the broader trend we saw in virtually every metropolitan area in every state in the country occurring here as well.

Once we can see who turned out - and where - at a granular level, a clearer picture can be painted. Honestly, I think we'll see that the biggest net gains were among suburban white defectors, which implies a persuasion element (and that was never the primary focus at any point during the campaign; it was primarily focused on turnout - which both sides seemingly succeeded at), and as such, I'm hesitant to give the campaign credit for that from a pure organizational standpoint.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ TL;DR: virtually everything about the campaign that we can analyze right now is perfectly in line with what you'd expect in a presidential election and/or was in line with improvements we saw all over the country (i.e. not Georgia-specific):

* The black share of the vote was the same as in the past 3 presidential elections ¹
* The youth share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The non-black, non-white share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The number of mail ballots returned was what you'd expect in a presidential election
* The raw GOP and DEM vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election more or less if you also account for the suburban & rural swings we saw everywhere else
* etc etc

We basically had a presidential election with added emphasis on it being a Trump referendum.

¹ (assuming exit polls are right)

[Adam Griffin]

This conversation reminded me to go ahead and map out the difference in turnout between 2016 and 2018 by county. What you're seeing here is each county's 2018 turnout as a share of its 2016 turnout. Statewide (currently), 2018 saw 96.24% of 2016's turnout.

Obviously, some areas will skew slightly if they are losing or gaining population rapidly. However, that is something that will only apply to a few counties in amounts large enough to skew them relative to the broader trends observed (and especially since only 2 years have elapsed).

We can see South Georgia had considerably lower turnout - this is due more to population loss than anywhere else. In Northwest Georgia, a consistent bloc of counties (which - if Congress had adopted an offered amendment - would be protected by VRA due to <50% of eligible voters casting ballots in presidential elections) fell behind despite no such population loss in all but 1 of them. In fact, pretty much all of the periphery of GA underperformed. Turnout was up somewhat meaningfully in a few ATL metro counties, but the greatest bump was in Central GA and south of Athens (the latter of which is probably due to population growth).

I could be wrong, but the areas with higher turnout seem to correspond well to the only two media markets in the state where both parties run television ads consistently in elections. While there were ads running in most of the media markets at the end, Macon and Atlanta always get the lion's share because they are the only 2 wholly contained within the state.

2018 Turnout (% of 2016) by County

[Skill and Chance]

This conversation reminded me to go ahead and map out the difference in turnout between 2016 and 2018 by county. What you're seeing here is each county's 2018 turnout as a share of its 2016 turnout. Statewide (currently), 2018 saw 96.24% of 2016's turnout.

Obviously, some areas will skew slightly if they are losing or gaining population rapidly. However, that is something that will only apply to a few counties in amounts large enough to skew them relative to the broader trends observed (and especially since only 2 years have elapsed).

We can see South Georgia had considerably lower turnout - this is due more to population loss than anywhere else. In Northwest Georgia, a consistent bloc of counties (which - if Congress had adopted an offered amendment - would be protected by VRA due to <50% of eligible voters casting ballots in presidential elections) fell behind despite no such population loss in all but 1 of them. In fact, pretty much all of the periphery of GA underperformed. Turnout was up somewhat meaningfully in a few ATL metro counties, but the greatest bump was in Central GA and south of Athens (the latter of which is probably due to population growth).

I could be wrong, but the areas with higher turnout seem to correspond well to the only two media markets in the state where both parties run television ads consistently in elections. While there were ads running in most of the media markets at the end, Macon and Atlanta always get the lion's share because they are the only 2 wholly contained within the state.

2018 Turnout (% of 2016) by County

Truly remarkable that Abrams got that close with Republicans having an apparent turnout advantage statewide.  There is enough room to improve in Atlanta that 2020 should be very contestable.

[Cashew]

This conversation reminded me to go ahead and map out the difference in turnout between 2016 and 2018 by county. What you're seeing here is each county's 2018 turnout as a share of its 2016 turnout. Statewide (currently), 2018 saw 96.24% of 2016's turnout.

Obviously, some areas will skew slightly if they are losing or gaining population rapidly. However, that is something that will only apply to a few counties in amounts large enough to skew them relative to the broader trends observed (and especially since only 2 years have elapsed).

We can see South Georgia had considerably lower turnout - this is due more to population loss than anywhere else. In Northwest Georgia, a consistent bloc of counties (which - if Congress had adopted an offered amendment - would be protected by VRA due to <50% of eligible voters casting ballots in presidential elections) fell behind despite no such population loss in all but 1 of them. In fact, pretty much all of the periphery of GA underperformed. Turnout was up somewhat meaningfully in a few ATL metro counties, but the greatest bump was in Central GA and south of Athens (the latter of which is probably due to population growth).

I could be wrong, but the areas with higher turnout seem to correspond well to the only two media markets in the state where both parties run television ads consistently in elections. While there were ads running in most of the media markets at the end, Macon and Atlanta always get the lion's share because they are the only 2 wholly contained within the state.

2018 Turnout (% of 2016) by County

Albany looks contained as well.

[Bacon King]

^^^ TL;DR: virtually everything about the campaign that we can analyze right now is perfectly in line with what you'd expect in a presidential election and/or was in line with improvements we saw all over the country (i.e. not Georgia-specific):

* The black share of the vote was the same as in the past 3 presidential elections ¹
* The youth share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The non-black, non-white share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The number of mail ballots returned was what you'd expect in a presidential election
* The raw GOP and DEM vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election more or less if you also account for the suburban & rural swings we saw everywhere else
* etc etc

We basically had a presidential election with added emphasis on it being a Trump referendum.

¹ (assuming exit polls are right)

Adam I really have to disagree with you here. Yes the election results are roughly where you'd assume they would be, given ongoing trends in Georgia plus the overall national environment. But that does not at all imply that Stacey Abram's campaign produced no "statistically significant positive effect on this year's outcome" and you're way too hyper-focused on the overall patterns and not considering the actual effort that happens to actually produce those patterns.

Political trends remain trends until they don't -- it's a folly to assume the continuation of a past trend is inevitable in the future (I agree the demographic trends underlying the party's recent improvements will continue but that's not my point here). States adhere to the national trend... except when they don't. Patterns in election results are never uniform.

You're implying here that Abrams didn't perform better than a hypothetical "generic democrat" paper candidate would have but there's no way that's true. I'd think common sense is enough to see that.

As demographic trends push Georgia to the left, our state Democratic Party has grown significantly, developed a much deeper organization, became a much better at allocating funds, registered so many more voters among low-turnout groups, and is running candidates who are far more capable and resourceful. These two facts are inseparable. Sure you can assume that a lot of the party's improvements are partially caused by favorable demographics, but at the same time it's the party (and its candidates and their campaigns) who capitalize on those trends to produce the more favorable results. Recruiting a candidate as good as Stacey Abrams is literally the very thing that caused this election's results to match the trends.

Similarly, the national environment motivated the Democratic electorate nationwide and resulted in certain turnout and vote share patterns among certain groups. BUT the national environment is what led to better and more ambitious candidates to run for office. It also led to the massive flood of donations that bolstered our campaigns across the country! The "national environment" isn't just some abstract thing that affects election results in a vacuum. It's an attitude that leads to better candidates with stronger campaigns who can win over a larger share of the voters. Again, the Democratic candidate and the effectiveness of her campaign is precisely why the statewide election results and exit polls match the general national trends. You can't separate one from the other.

tl;dr demographics are not destiny, campaigns matter


sorry if this comes across as harsh, I'm just trying to point out an inaccurate opinion I see, one that potentially would cause devastating election results if said opinion ever influenced campaign behavior and etc. As the only two Georgian forum veterans we have a duty to catch each other's blind spots!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Just like in the case of FL, polling underestimated Kemp due to wave

[GeorgiaModerate]

Just like in the case of FL, polling underestimated Kemp due to wave

The final RCP polling average had Kemp+3.0.  He has apparently won by 1.5.  I recommend that you look up the meaning of the word "underestimated", and in general check your facts and terms before posting.  It might prevent you from posting such idiotically incorrect statements.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ TL;DR: virtually everything about the campaign that we can analyze right now is perfectly in line with what you'd expect in a presidential election and/or was in line with improvements we saw all over the country (i.e. not Georgia-specific):

* The black share of the vote was the same as in the past 3 presidential elections ¹
* The youth share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The non-black, non-white share of the vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election ¹
* The number of mail ballots returned was what you'd expect in a presidential election
* The raw GOP and DEM vote was what you'd expect in a presidential election more or less if you also account for the suburban & rural swings we saw everywhere else
* etc etc

We basically had a presidential election with added emphasis on it being a Trump referendum.

¹ (assuming exit polls are right)

Adam I really have to disagree with you here. Yes the election results are roughly where you'd assume they would be, given ongoing trends in Georgia plus the overall national environment. But that does not at all imply that Stacey Abram's campaign produced no "statistically significant positive effect on this year's outcome" and you're way too hyper-focused on the overall patterns and not considering the actual effort that happens to actually produce those patterns.

Political trends remain trends until they don't -- it's a folly to assume the continuation of a past trend is inevitable in the future (I agree the demographic trends underlying the party's recent improvements will continue but that's not my point here). States adhere to the national trend... except when they don't. Patterns in election results are never uniform.

You're implying here that Abrams didn't perform better than a hypothetical "generic democrat" paper candidate would have but there's no way that's true. I'd think common sense is enough to see that.

As demographic trends push Georgia to the left, our state Democratic Party has grown significantly, developed a much deeper organization, became a much better at allocating funds, registered so many more voters among low-turnout groups, and is running candidates who are far more capable and resourceful. These two facts are inseparable. Sure you can assume that a lot of the party's improvements are partially caused by favorable demographics, but at the same time it's the party (and its candidates and their campaigns) who capitalize on those trends to produce the more favorable results. Recruiting a candidate as good as Stacey Abrams is literally the very thing that caused this election's results to match the trends.

Similarly, the national environment motivated the Democratic electorate nationwide and resulted in certain turnout and vote share patterns among certain groups. BUT the national environment is what led to better and more ambitious candidates to run for office. It also led to the massive flood of donations that bolstered our campaigns across the country! The "national environment" isn't just some abstract thing that affects election results in a vacuum. It's an attitude that leads to better candidates with stronger campaigns who can win over a larger share of the voters. Again, the Democratic candidate and the effectiveness of her campaign is precisely why the statewide election results and exit polls match the general national trends. You can't separate one from the other.

tl;dr demographics are not destiny, campaigns matter


sorry if this comes across as harsh, I'm just trying to point out an inaccurate opinion I see, one that potentially would cause devastating election results if said opinion ever influenced campaign behavior and etc. As the only two Georgian forum veterans we have a duty to catch each other's blind spots!

I thought I said it at the beginning (or at least implied it), but my point was that there was no net positive impact. If we had an election where we got 45% of the vote with 2.5m voters and an election where we got 45% of the vote with 4m voters, we don't get (meaningful) credit for turning out 675k additional voters when the GOP also turned out a proportionate amount more (and yes, I know that's not necessarily what happened here, but I'm trying to dispense with this "higher turnout was a good thing" belief so many people have). Yes, turning out more voters can be viewed as progress - but not necessarily if your opposition replicates the effect more or less as well.

Turnout was considerably higher compared to four years ago in every competitive state. The same trends we saw in GA (big improvements in metro areas, losses in rural areas) we saw everywhere, with the end result being an improvement or loss for Democrats nationally based on which one of those 2 broader areas is a bigger share of voters in each jurisdiction. Unless you want to make the argument that Democrats had Abrams-tier candidates running everywhere who inspired the masses to turn out in unprecedented numbers, I don't think this can be tied to candidate or campaign quality.

The campaign may have had an impact, but I don't think they had a net impact - and even if so, certainly not one worth idolizing. Either they were also responsible for driving tons of GOP voters to the polls as well, or the campaign failed to foresee how high turnout across the board was going to be, thereby not overcoming the wave of red voters sitting in wait.

So again, we won't know for sure until precinct-level data is available (exit polls can be wrong!), but the simplest explanation as of now in conjunction with what we saw all over the country as well is that enthusiasm on both sides was sky high and that replicated the 2016 presidential electorate, with Kemp winning 1-2 out of 100 Clinton voters and Abrams winning 3-4 out of 100 Trump/third party voters. That explanation would shrink the margin by 2-4 points compared to Clinton's margin and when combined with the specific geographic swings compared to 2016 is the simplest explanation.

If that is what happened, then that is due to a persuasion effect and not a turnout effect. Everybody involved with the campaign with whom I interacted - including Abrams telling me this herself - always emphasized that their plans was built around turnout; turning out first-time voters, those who don't vote in midterms, low-propensity voters, etc - and not on persuading fence-sitters or swing voters. I didn't particularly care for it from a local perspective (because my area is still one where persuasion has a bit more impact than in the average GA community), but we focused locally almost exclusively on driving up Latino and black turnout with canvassing and phone banking this cycle.

If, in the end, it was white suburbanites being persuaded to back Abrams due to a hostile, anti-GOP climate more than anything, then that is not something in my view that gets credited to teams who were knocking on doors of a completely different demographics - especially when we saw the same broader trends everywhere else in the country, too. The TV ads would have had more of an impact among these persuadables than any field ops that weren't targeting them (and TV ads are nothing new nor revolutionary here).

And no offense taken!

[Adam Griffin]

Anyway, I can probably boil down the main point I'm trying to make here into two or three sentences rather than word vomiting:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Again, though (as I've maintained), I could be completely wrong here! Until we get precinct-by-precinct and statewide turnout reports, it's just inferring based on what exit polls and top-line margins/raw vote show. This was why I wasn't initially even going to get into details about it until we had more comprehensive and granular data-sets to look at, but alas.

[Aurelio21]

I thought I said it at the beginning (or at least implied it), but my point was that there was no net positive impact. If we had an election where we got 45% of the vote with 2.5m voters and an election where we got 45% of the vote with 4m voters, we don't get (meaningful) credit for turning out 675k additional voters when the GOP also turned out a proportionate amount more (and yes, I know that's not necessarily what happened here, but I'm trying to dispense with this "higher turnout was a good thing" belief so many people have). Yes, turning out more voters can be viewed as progress - but not necessarily if your opposition replicates the effect more or less as well.

Turnout was considerably higher compared to four years ago in every competitive state. The same trends we saw in GA (big improvements in metro areas, losses in rural areas) we saw everywhere, with the end result being an improvement or loss for Democrats nationally based on which one of those 2 broader areas is a bigger share of voters in each jurisdiction. Unless you want to make the argument that Democrats had Abrams-tier candidates running everywhere who inspired the masses to turn out in unprecedented numbers, I don't think this can be tied to candidate or campaign quality.

The campaign may have had an impact, but I don't think they had a net impact - and even if so, certainly not one worth idolizing. Either they were also responsible for driving tons of GOP voters to the polls as well, or the campaign failed to foresee how high turnout across the board was going to be, thereby not overcoming the wave of red voters sitting in wait.

So again, we won't know for sure until precinct-level data is available (exit polls can be wrong!), but the simplest explanation as of now in conjunction with what we saw all over the country as well is that enthusiasm on both sides was sky high and that replicated the 2016 presidential electorate, with Kemp winning 1-2 out of 100 Clinton voters and Abrams winning 3-4 out of 100 Trump/third party voters. That explanation would shrink the margin by 2-4 points compared to Clinton's margin and when combined with the specific geographic swings compared to 2016 is the simplest explanation.

If that is what happened, then that is due to a persuasion effect and not a turnout effect. Everybody involved with the campaign with whom I interacted - including Abrams telling me this herself - always emphasized that their plans was built around turnout; turning out first-time voters, those who don't vote in midterms, low-propensity voters, etc - and not on persuading fence-sitters or swing voters. I didn't particularly care for it from a local perspective (because my area is still one where persuasion has a bit more impact than in the average GA community), but we focused locally almost exclusively on driving up Latino and black turnout with canvassing and phone banking this cycle.

If, in the end, it was white suburbanites being persuaded to back Abrams due to a hostile, anti-GOP climate more than anything, then that is not something in my view that gets credited to teams who were knocking on doors of a completely different demographics - especially when we saw the same broader trends everywhere else in the country, too. The TV ads would have had more of an impact among these persuadables than any field ops that weren't targeting them (and TV ads are nothing new nor revolutionary here).

And no offense taken!

As far as I have read in the thread as well the way Mr Kemp displayed himself with his "rural strategy": This certainly has turned off suburban voters.

For me as a moderate conservative (translated into an american view), Mr Kemp is simply a reactionary (gun posing, politics only for the rural part, no policy instead only displaying his  archreactionary world view etc.)
As Mrs Abrams started from a minority position, your proposed change of strategy should have delivered the victory for her: A twofold strategy: registration of non-likely voters until x days before the election, than react to Mr Kemp running to the far-right corner.

The reason is simple: Going from 80 % efficency to 95 % you simply need to put the doubled resources into it. Going from 95 efficency to 99 % you need again doubling your efforts.
A campaign only has finite resources (time, money) thus at latest after contacting 95 % of possible non-likely voters there is no return of investment. And Mr Kemp alienated suburban voters with his antics. Maybe tieing him to the fiscally irresponsible politics of Mr Trump should have convinced a big swath of more suburban/exurban voters to change sides.

[J. J.]

It amazes me how Abrams and the Democrats continue to drag out this process. Kemp is holding over the 50% mark, and it doesn't seem like the margin has narrowed by that much. Exactly how many more ballots are there left to count at this point? If there's only a few thousand, then that probably won't be enough to force a runoff.

I've heard suggestions that Abrams is basically keeping her supporters energized for some of these other runoffs. 

[GP270watch]

 Abrams did a great job. With a few exceptions you don't turn things around in a single election, you have to build towards the goals you want. Like Beto in Texas she built a great ground game that if sustained bodes well for the future.

[Pollster]

Abrams preparing an unprecedented legal challenge

[Young Conservative]

Abrams preparing an unprecedented legal challenge

Awful optics

[Rookie Yinzer]

Abrams preparing an unprecedented legal challenge

Awful optics

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the potential of a lawsuit but if she feels there were legitimate attempts to suppress votes/voters, is she supposed to lay down and take it so fragile people don't have to be confronted with the fact that unfair elections are held in the supposed freest country on Earth?

[Calthrina950]

Abrams preparing an unprecedented legal challenge

Awful optics

I agree. Abrams is still refusing to concede, and looks intent on dragging this process out for much longer than it should be. She might end up costing Barrow a victory in the runoff next month with these antics. If I were her, I would concede at this point and start working towards the future, either on Barrow's behalf or for the upcoming 2020 and 2022 elections in Georgia.

[Zaybay]

This might sound surprising to some on Atlas, but no one, especially the voters, cares about "optics". If Abrams were to drag this out to December of 2019, the voters would still forget after a month. It also doesnt help how everyone is complaining for Abrams to concede when a good 20 members of the House of Reps have still not conceded their races and have called the result a fraud.

[Young Conservative]

This might sound surprising to some on Atlas, but no one, especially the voters, cares about "optics". If Abrams were to drag this out to December of 2019, the voters would still forget after a month. It also doesnt help how everyone is complaining for Abrams to concede when a good 20 members of the House of Reps have still not conceded their races and have called the result a fraud.

They wouldn't forget by December 4th, when the runoff for other races is.

[ON Progressive]

This might sound surprising to some on Atlas, but no one, especially the voters, cares about "optics". If Abrams were to drag this out to December of 2019, the voters would still forget after a month. It also doesnt help how everyone is complaining for Abrams to concede when a good 20 members of the House of Reps have still not conceded their races and have called the result a fraud.

They wouldn't forget by December 4th, when the runoff for other races is.

Nobody would vote against Barrow just because Abrams is dragging it out.