Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[ON Progressive]

I really, really hope John Barrow wins the SOS runoff, even though it appears like he almost certainly won't unless black voters remain energized. That would put an end to most of this banana republic nonsense.

Agreed. Not only would Barrow be a massive improvement compared to KKKemp, it would also make me feel very good about the state for 2020 since runoffs have usually been absolutely atrocious for Democrats in the state.

[henster]

Unfortunately I think Stacey damaged herself with the ongoing fight and wouldn't be a good candidate against Perdue. I hope Sally Yates can be convinced to run because she is the exact type of candidate needed to win.

[MT Treasurer]

The GA-SoS runoff is incredibly difficult to predict. I think Raffensberger wins 51-49 (perhaps a little closer than that), but it could really go either way.

[pppolitics]

With Georgia being the 2nd most inelastic state in the nation and the voting trend strongly favoring Democrats, is Georgia at some point going to be a purple state or is it going to do a wholesale flip from a red state to a blue state?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-house-districts-that-swing-the-most-and-least-with-the-national-mood/

[MT Treasurer]

Yeah, if when GA flips, it will be much more similar to VA than NC, though I’m sure all the pundits will treat it as a "true swing/purple/Toss-up" state like VA.

[Rookie Yinzer]

The 2020 nominee needs to invest heavily in field in GA. The swings in Metro Atlanta were massive and a black woman Democrat lost by 55k votes in a midterm while her opponent had his thumbs on the scale.

An Abrams 2020 Senate run would be icing on the cake but idk if she wants to continue to do the legislative thing. She wants to be in executive office.

[Adam Griffin]

I've been spending the afternoon breaking down the Governor results by congressional district. I've still got a ways to go, but I've either calculated and/or gathered all the data for 9 of the 14 CDs so far.

I feel confident at this point in saying that Abrams won 6 of the 14 CDs (not too surprising), as she definitely overperformed Bourdeaux in 7, and I have a hard time seeing her not over-perform McBath in 6. I'll have the final numbers in the next day or so.

[lfromnj]

I've been spending the afternoon breaking down the Governor results by congressional district. I've still got a ways to go, but I've either calculated and/or gathered all the data for 9 of the 14 CDs so far.

I feel confident at this point in saying that Abrams won 6 of the 14 CDs (not too surprising), as she definitely overperformed Bourdeaux in 7, and I have a hard time seeing her not over-perform McBath in 6. I'll have the final numbers in the next day or so.

Coleman already has them

[Adam Griffin]

I've been spending the afternoon breaking down the Governor results by congressional district. I've still got a ways to go, but I've either calculated and/or gathered all the data for 9 of the 14 CDs so far.

I feel confident at this point in saying that Abrams won 6 of the 14 CDs (not too surprising), as she definitely overperformed Bourdeaux in 7, and I have a hard time seeing her not over-perform McBath in 6. I'll have the final numbers in the next day or so.

Coleman already has them

Miles wasn't the one to do them, but yeah: what a waste of time.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Are those on Twitter?

[Adam Griffin]

Are those on Twitter?

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Of all of these, I'm probably most surprised by CD 11 and the fact that Kemp was held below 60% there. I know it's suburbia and all, but still.

She also held on relatively well in 12 given the shifts throughout much of it away from Democrats over the past few years (Columbia & Richmond are solely responsible for preventing a deluge). CD 1 would have been considerably closer if not for the hemorrhaging in the interior.

Related fun fact: GA-1 & GA-12 had the exact same margin in the presidential election in 2012.

[IceSpear]

At least Abrams' coattails managed to drag McBath across the finish line. Too bad they couldn't get Bourdeaux across as well...

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

WTH GA-2? Did rural blacks have low turnout? UGHHHHH

[lfromnj]

WTH GA-2? Did rural blacks have low turnout? UGHHHHH

yeah that place is bleeding population. Bishop got 60% though but thats probably coz he is blue doggish and the racist hicks there don't hate him as much as they hate the liberal black atlanta WOMAN.

[Rookie Yinzer]

WTH GA-2? Did rural blacks have low turnout? UGHHHHH

Yeah. I meant to ask Griff this right after the election, do we just need to write counties like Baker, Early, Mitchell, Marion, Chattahoochee, etc off as potential Dem counties? Hillary lost them... but she was Hillary. Abrams went out of her way to show Southwest GA attention.  Are the black voters/Democrats up in the Metro Atlanta area/Macon/Columbus now?

She even lost Wilkinson, Twiggs, Washington, and Burke and barely held on in Baldwin and she focused on that area heavily during her bus tours in the primary and general.

[Adam Griffin]

Speaking of which, here's a map showing which candidate did better: the congressional D or Abrams. In half of the districts, Abrams overperformed the Dem House candidate by roughly 2 points. In the whitest CDs, she overperformed by around 1 point, as well as in David Scott's district. She did 3 points better in Rick Allen's district and 4 points better in Loudermilk's.

In Sanford Bishop's district, she underperformed him by 7 points. This is because we're losing the region (mostly due to population loss) - and rapidly. At the same time, there are more than a few rural whites who are willing to vote for blacks and/or Democrats if they know them. In fact, this gap is probably even more ridiculous-looking when you exclude the half or so of the CD that's Columbus/Macon/Albany.

[lfromnj]

why do you democrats even care about rural counties that are racially polarized?
If you can't win them means the people just left and its not a problem with losing black voters in general.

[DrScholl]

If a Democratic election supervisor had put their thumb on the scale to damage Larry Hogan or Charlie Baker there would be quite a lot of outrage on Atlas by some of the people attacking Abrams. She conceded the race and isn't going to drag things out with lawsuits which is really all that she needed to do. She doesn't need to go out of her way to be gracious or pretend as if there weren't shady tactics used before the election.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

If a Democratic election supervisor had put their thumb on the scale to damage Larry Hogan or Charlie Baker there would be quite a lot of outrage on Atlas by some of the people attacking Abrams. She conceded the race and isn't going to drag things out with lawsuits which is really all that she needed to do. She doesn't need to go out of her way to be gracious or pretend as if there weren't shady tactics used before the election.

[Adam Griffin]

WTH GA-2? Did rural blacks have low turnout? UGHHHHH

Yeah. I meant to ask Griff this right after the election, do we just need to write counties like Baker, Early, Mitchell, Marion, Chattahoochee, etc off as potential Dem counties? Hillary lost them... but she was Hillary. Abrams went out of her way to show Southwest GA attention.  Are the black voters/Democrats up in the Metro Atlanta area/Macon/Columbus now?

She even lost Wilkinson, Twiggs, Washington, and Burke and barely held on in Baldwin and she focused on that area heavily during her bus tours in the primary and general.

Yeah, there are multiple dynamics at play here depending on exactly where in the Black Belt we're looking. We'll need to see the extent of these shifts in the demographic turnouts from SoS in a few weeks to get an exact idea, but:

In places like Twiggs, Wilkinson and along the eastern half of the Black Belt, we're dealing more with a case of what I've tried to preach to anybody in the party who would listen: we had a lot more rural whites voting Democratic until now than people seemingly realized. It's the same thing we've been seeing in far North GA, where people thought the counties couldn't get much more than 70% GOP a decade ago, and didn't realize that that meant whites there were still 30% D then. "The brand" as I call it in these ancestral Democratic counties in the Belt kept more rural whites voting Democratic (especially in state elections) longer than many thought possible; now it's falling apart. Just look at the Carter-Abrams swings in some of these places.


SW GA is its own monster. I'm sure the above also applies there to some degree (though I'm betting that the white Dem falloff is actually smaller), but there's a huge amount of population loss occurring as well. Most young people are leaving regardless of race and relocating to various urban areas, but you also have an even greater healthcare inequality among races in rural areas; black life expectancy in these places is a decade or more less than white life expectancy. So all of your old black voters are dying sooner than old white voters (which, to be fair, has always been the case to some degree), and all the young people are disappearing.

There may be even more at work, but we first really began to see this happening in 2014 in SW GA; I initially thought perhaps Carter just didn't do enough and it was because Deal spent a considerable amount of time campaigning there. However, we saw it with both Clinton and Abrams, too, so it's not just a one-off. The weird thing is how well this part of the state held up through 2012, which makes me think there is also just a lack of engagement among the black voters remaining there that reappeared after Obama's re-election.


Anyway, at this point, I'm pretty much of the opinion that we abandon everything below the Fall Line that isn't an urban area. I'm not the type to say "to hell with rural areas", but the population density is just so ridiculously low and the engagement from our base voters seems to be collapsing alongside it that I can't mathematically justify making it the centerpiece of any rural strategy. In most of these places, we're talking about a difference of a few hundred votes between a 10-point D win and a 10-point R win.

Here's an alternative margin map showing the gubernatorial race. In my perhaps-not-so-unbiased opinion, if you want to focus on alleviating weaknesses in rural areas while balancing for population density/potential votes earned, then perhaps going to the rural part of the state with the greatest overall population density and Republican strength is a better aim in building a majority sooner rather than later.

[Adam Griffin]

The one thing that does suck about losing these areas is that it restricts the variance of potential future statewide candidates. It's great to be able to cultivate talent even in small towns and counties, who can ultimately run for higher offices and appeal to different constituencies in a very geographically large state. We were at our strongest when we had a smorgasbord of white and black urban and white and black rural elected officials in our coalition. The GOP understands this and it's why they've pursued the strategy they pursued.

Sadly, we're already in a position where virtually every single elected Democrat in the General Assembly doesn't have a f[inks]ing clue about what a competitive general election entails, and nearly ditto for even our county-level elected officials. Increasingly, we're now headed for a scenario where it'll just be more of the same - except they'll all be from ATL and a few other urban clusters on top of that.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that the suburbs are shifting, which will create more competitive districts (for now), but depending on what is making them competitive here, the GOP may just draw a bunch of safe majority-minority finger districts out into the suburbs to control any potential growth in this regard.

[Calthrina950]

The one thing that does suck about losing these areas is that it restricts the variance of potential future statewide candidates. It's great to be able to cultivate talent even in small towns and counties, who can ultimately run for higher offices and appeal to different constituencies in a very geographically large state. We were at our strongest when we had a smorgasbord of white and black urban and white and black rural elected officials in our coalition. The GOP understands this and it's why they've pursued the strategy they pursued.

Sadly, we're already in a position where virtually every single elected Democrat in the General Assembly doesn't have a f[inks]ing clue about what a competitive general election entails, and nearly ditto for even our county-level elected officials. Increasingly, we're now headed for a scenario where it'll just be more of the same - except they'll all be from ATL and a few other urban clusters on top of that.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that the suburbs are shifting, which will create more competitive districts (for now), but depending on what is making them competitive here, the GOP may just draw a bunch of safe majority-minority finger districts out into the suburbs to control any potential growth in this regard.

Does this mean that the urban-rural divide is both hurting and helping Democrats in Georgia? It seems as if the shift of the Atlanta metropolitan area towards the Democrats is gradually turning Georgia into a tossup state, but that the Republican dominance in the rural areas is undermining the Georgia Democratic Party's structure.

[Adam Griffin]

The one thing that does suck about losing these areas is that it restricts the variance of potential future statewide candidates. It's great to be able to cultivate talent even in small towns and counties, who can ultimately run for higher offices and appeal to different constituencies in a very geographically large state. We were at our strongest when we had a smorgasbord of white and black urban and white and black rural elected officials in our coalition. The GOP understands this and it's why they've pursued the strategy they pursued.

Sadly, we're already in a position where virtually every single elected Democrat in the General Assembly doesn't have a f[inks]ing clue about what a competitive general election entails, and nearly ditto for even our county-level elected officials. Increasingly, we're now headed for a scenario where it'll just be more of the same - except they'll all be from ATL and a few other urban clusters on top of that.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that the suburbs are shifting, which will create more competitive districts (for now), but depending on what is making them competitive here, the GOP may just draw a bunch of safe majority-minority finger districts out into the suburbs to control any potential growth in this regard.

Does this mean that the urban-rural divide is both hurting and helping Democrats in Georgia? It seems as if the shift of the Atlanta metropolitan area towards the Democrats is gradually turning Georgia into a tossup state, but that the Republican dominance in the rural areas is undermining the Georgia Democratic Party's structure.

Yes. Whenever I've been asked to talk trends and data in-person over the past few years among those who matter, I've highlighted two potential future scenarios GA faces: I call them "the Illinois Pathway" and the "North Carolina Pathway".

GA, by default, has been on the IL pathway for a long time. This is where one big urban cluster and its metro area grows so big that it carries the rest of the state across the finish line kicking and screaming. That, given the attitudes in our party, will likely be how GA goes Democratic. It will, however, have many drawbacks - the most obvious one being that we'll probably be a minority in the General Assembly for anywhere from 10-20 years after we take the Governor's mansion. We'll end up controlling every statewide office but be incapable of passing even the most basic legislation. GA Democrats won't have a legitimate chance to truly govern until some time in the 2030s - especially now that Kemp has won (and maybe as late as 2040, depending). If the suburbs truly do crack, though, then some of this will be mitigated.

The NC pathway is one that is difficult without NC's inherent geography and urban spread, but can be pursued with the right resources. NC has a bunch of mid-sized metro areas scattered all over the state. It's hard for small towns to be left in a vacuum without extensive left-of-center media influence. The end result is that its rural areas have never become anywhere nearly as GOP as Georgia's, and that - at least until the awful gerrymandering of this decade - left NC Dems capable of winning majorities in the State Legislature and bolstered its down-ballot and local Democratic delegations. That, in turn, made it possible for Dems to continue winning statewide races as well. It's pretty crazy when you think about the fact that Mitt Romney only cracked 70% in 10% of NC's counties (and Trump 22%). In GA, it was 33% and 40%, respectively.

[Adam Griffin]

The one thing that does suck about losing these areas is that it restricts the variance of potential future statewide candidates. It's great to be able to cultivate talent even in small towns and counties, who can ultimately run for higher offices and appeal to different constituencies in a very geographically large state. We were at our strongest when we had a smorgasbord of white and black urban and white and black rural elected officials in our coalition. The GOP understands this and it's why they've pursued the strategy they pursued.

Sadly, we're already in a position where virtually every single elected Democrat in the General Assembly doesn't have a f[inks]ing clue about what a competitive general election entails, and nearly ditto for even our county-level elected officials. Increasingly, we're now headed for a scenario where it'll just be more of the same - except they'll all be from ATL and a few other urban clusters on top of that.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that the suburbs are shifting, which will create more competitive districts (for now), but depending on what is making them competitive here, the GOP may just draw a bunch of safe majority-minority finger districts out into the suburbs to control any potential growth in this regard.

If there was anything to be learned from the last election, it would be that, in inelastic Georgia, the character of individual candidate hardly matters.

If the candidates for governor were Popeye (D) and Bluto (R), the results would be Popeye (D) - 49% and Bluto (R) - 51%.

I would say that having prior experience with respect to running in competitive GEs does matter. As tight as the races were, if you take the 2-way vote between each (by assigning any Libertarian vote as 75% R, 25% D), you get Democrats losing by anywhere from 1 point to 6 points. A 5-point spread is a pretty big deal - in fact, bigger here than in any other state, given we're actually competitive (unlike LA & CA) and you must overcome the 50% threshold.

Code:

SOS	        R+1.54
GOV	        R+1.86
AG	        R+2.62
LTGOV	R+3.26
PSC3	        R+3.42
PSC5 	R+4.30
INS	        R+4.72
LAB	        R+4.92
SSS	        R+6.06
AGCOM	R+6.16

Abrams likely did well because she built an infrastructure and was at the top of the ticket. Barrow did well because he had ran in competitive elections before and cultivated an image necessary for cross-over appeal. Gary Black (AG Comm) is very well-liked (especially among farmers) and that's why he won by the largest margin. It doesn't matter as much as it does in other more elastic states, but it does matter here - and especially until we have an unassailable majority. Even if it becomes an after-thought, we'll need candidates who have strong GE experience if we want to control the General Assembly, because we're not going to win a majority anytime soon unless we can find ways to win competitive (and even some not-so-competitive) districts.

At minimum, candidates with competitive GE experience will ultimately be a by-product of us actually being successful.