Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Adam Griffin]

However, I will point out (using the calculated margins above) that this cycle was the closest to parity in terms of Democratic performance across racial lines.

From 2002 through 2016 in GA, if you took a look at non-federal, non-incumbent Democrats, the average white Democratic candidate outperformed the average black Democratic candidate by 8 points.

This year's numbers? A mere 0.6 points using the above totals.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If you simply look at the margins without distributing the Libertarian vote, it's 0.2 points:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

While I'm sure there are/would still be wider gulfs when it comes to specific contests and situations, seeing this gulf virtually disappear in the aggregate is pretty impressive. Given the trends I've observed from each cycle over the past 15 years, it tells us that race will not be a factor in top-ticket performance in 2022.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Libertarian SoS candidate endorses Barrow in runoff.

[ON Progressive]

Libertarian SoS candidate endorses Barrow in runoff.

The first time I will unironicaly say a Libertarian did an FF move.

[Adam Griffin]

Just a to-be-continued aspect of what I mentioned a couple of days ago about population density and the like.

One good thing (I guess): Abrams' vote share in "Rural GA" wasn't smaller than Clinton's (but Kemp got a higher share, suggesting he basically - at least in net terms - consolidated the 2016 third party vote), giving the GOP a 2-point swing.

In the remaining 80% of the state, Abrams won by 9 (compared to Clinton winning by 3), for a 6-point swing to Democrats.

Another interesting thing I just noticed in running these numbers: Democrats netted more votes out of Henry County than out of either Bibb or Muscogee. Even once-unimportant metro counties are now producing more net Democratic votes statewide than the major urban central/south GA areas, lol. Maybe we just forget about everything south of the Fall Line save for Savannah and call it a day (j/k)!

[Skill and Chance]

GA-07 almost looks gone for Woodall in 2020 given Abrams got a majority in the CD, and it's hard to see Trump improving on that.  Also, GA-02 as currently drawn looks set to flip in the next Dem president midterm.

[Mr.Phips]

GA-07 almost looks gone for Woodall in 2020 given Abrams got a majority in the CD, and it's hard to see Trump improving on that.  Also, GA-02 as currently drawn looks set to flip in the next Dem president midterm.

GA-02 is pretty inelastic.  There are very few whites there that will vote Dem unlike the Atlanta area.

[jamestroll]

I could be completely wrong here but I feel like:

In the 2020s/2030s that Illinois will constantly produce larger margins of victories for Democratic presidential candidates than Georgia but a Republican would be more likely to win down ballot in Illinois statewide than Georgia.

Georgia is going to become very polarized in voting patterns but this time to the Democratic side.

[lfromnj]

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.

yeah also Sanford bishop is pretty blue doggy so some racist hicks there might vote for him if they never saw his face but heard about him.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Georgia is going to become very polarized in voting patterns but this time to the Democratic side.

Can't wait. I'm ready for the GOP to start losing 52-48 heartbreakers over and over again.

[Adam Griffin]

GA-07 almost looks gone for Woodall in 2020 given Abrams got a majority in the CD, and it's hard to see Trump improving on that.  Also, GA-02 as currently drawn looks set to flip in the next Dem president midterm.

Bishop honestly is a strong incumbent and will continue to overperform the lean of the district for as long as it exists. However, as I was discussing in another thread, I've been under the impression from multiple sources that GA-2 is not actually mandated by the VRA and was designed as a Democratic vote-sink back in the day (aka 2011) when Democrats could still compete across much of rural South Georgia. Given the polarization and population loss, if this is true, then the GOP will undoubtedly carve it up like a Thanksgiving ham come 2021 (with potentially a "concession" of a fourth black-majority metro ATL district, which is probably possible at this point given black growth over a decade).

[Adam Griffin]

Nothing new or groundbreaking here, but: I took the statewide turnout (61.44% of RVs) and applied it evenly to every county (using their 2018 margins), to see how much of an advantage Kemp enjoyed in that regard. If every county had had the same turnout identical to the state as a whole and retained their same support levels, then the margin would have contracted by another 10k votes and 0.3 points:

1960079 - 50.09% - Kemp
1916034 - 48.97% - Abrams

[politicallefty]

Anyone want to make me feel better? I don’t even live in Georgia, but this one hurts me. Even worse, it scares me. I really liked Stacey Abrams and I have no doubt she was robbed, but Kemp actually scares me. Nathan Deal was bad, but he still put the good of the state above regressive social policy for the most part. It’s basically Trump, except very socially conservative, isn’t it?

[Adam Griffin]

For the past couple of years, I've been telling people that voter registration would in effect becoming a thing of the past in GA, thanks to automatic voter registration that began in December 2016 (that was pushed and initially promoted by Brian Kemp of all people). AVR is opt-out in GA, meaning that everybody who passes through the DMV gets registered or has their information updated unless they check a tiny box on the back of the paperwork. GA offers a 5-year and an 8-year license; generally, poorer and younger individuals are going to opt for the 5-year in order to save money in the short term. This process has now been in full steam for 2 years.

By the time 2020 rolls around, virtually every adult citizen in the state is going to have either passed via the DMV since AVR was unveiled or already had/has a voter registration on file. Even with Kemp purging upwards of a million people over 2 years, look at the results:

Change in Voter Registration as a % of CVAP, 11/2016 to 11/2018



Most counties have seen an increase of anywhere from 15-20 percentage points in terms of their registrations as a share of CVAP over the past 2 years.

The 2018 CVAP RV percentages are linked to the 5-year Census estimates (2012-17) and the 2016 CVAP RV figures are linked to the 2011-16 set, and as such, lag the real up-to-date figures by just a bit. Additionally, counties that are growing or shrinking rapidly will obviously have some skewed figures (more than 1 county in the metro shows registration in excess of 100% of CVAP), but in most cases, it's a relatively accurate way of assessing the huge shift in voter registration. The shifts are simply too big - regardless of population growth or averaged Census data that's behind a couple of years - to shrug off.

Some examples (top 5 shifts + a couple of other urban examples):

County	11/2016	11/2018
Clayton	70.31%	98.17%
Bryan	82.69%	109.59%
Lowndes	53.93%	80.53%
Hall	71.82%	97.74%
Dekalb	81.61%	101.28%
Chatham	69.75%	89.58%
Fulton	77.70%	100.81%

While they can continue to pursue exact match and the "two elections missed" purging, it's going to continue making even less of a difference as long as most people are cycling through the DMV once every 5 years. In actuality, I think this change explains the huge shift relative to 2014 & 2016 in Democratic performance more than any campaign efforts or organizing.

[Adam Griffin]

Anyone want to make me feel better? I don’t even live in Georgia, but this one hurts me. Even worse, it scares me. I really liked Stacey Abrams and I have no doubt she was robbed, but Kemp actually scares me. Nathan Deal was bad, but he still put the good of the state above regressive social policy for the most part. It’s basically Trump, except very socially conservative, isn’t it?

Who knows. As I said during the primary, Kemp had a record of being quite a moderate before he began positioning himself to run for Governor (and Cagle, despite being "establishment" was far loonier). I think in reality, he's far more moderate than he campaigned as during the primary (he did pivot to some degree near the end of the general). However, he's in a tough situation where he's only in office because he riled up the rural base, but at the same time, he can't afford long-term to alienate any more moderate or suburban voters.

Whether he gets a second term or not remains to be seen, but I feel confident in saying that one way or another, he'll be the last GOP Governor of Georgia for a long time.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Anyone want to make me feel better? I don’t even live in Georgia, but this one hurts me. Even worse, it scares me. I really liked Stacey Abrams and I have no doubt she was robbed, but Kemp actually scares me. Nathan Deal was bad, but he still put the good of the state above regressive social policy for the most part. It’s basically Trump, except very socially conservative, isn’t it?

He barely got over 50 percent. He doesn’t strike me as someone who will get more popular especially if he pursues some of these policies he’s floating like permitless gun carry and the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. And Georgia is pretty immune to national environments and pretty inelastic so put a strong candidate with a nice turnout operation against him and he can’t rely on a potential Democratic President in office to save him in 2022.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Anyone want to make me feel better? I don’t even live in Georgia, but this one hurts me. Even worse, it scares me. I really liked Stacey Abrams and I have no doubt she was robbed, but Kemp actually scares me. Nathan Deal was bad, but he still put the good of the state above regressive social policy for the most part. It’s basically Trump, except very socially conservative, isn’t it?

He barely got over 50 percent. He doesn’t strike me as someone who will get more popular especially if he pursues some of these policies he’s floating like permitless gun carry and the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. And Georgia is pretty immune to national environments and pretty inelastic so put a strong candidate with a nice turnout operation against him and he can’t rely on a potential Democratic President in office to save him in 2022.

This is why voting is so difficult for me.

I certainly believe in the underlined that Kemp advocates.  Very much so.  I have to balance that with the fact that my spirit does not witness to his.  

I don't care for Stacey Abrams very much, but Kemp is a person that I consider to be fundamentally unfair and unjust, mean-spirited and lacking in empathy.  I have never believed that "If Stacey Abrams Wins, We All Win!" pap, but I do view Kemp as a stealth stalwart of the South's "Never" Faction, and that is far worse.

[Adam Griffin]

...

With regard to my comments the other day, I wasn't inferring that the campaign had no meaningful impact on turning out Democratic voters. My initial opinion post-election on the result is basically that while there were certainly gains produced from field and from the national climate, a combination of factors on a statewide level by and large negated these in net terms. I think honestly that just Abrams being a black female automatically cancelled out a lot of her potential gains via riling up white racists. Kemp tapped into a certain angst and focused on boosting turnout in places where he would perform strongly as well.

We might even be able to say that AVR helped negate some of the net gains, given that the hundreds of thousands of added registrations to the rolls were by and large distributed evenly throughout the state. To my knowledge, GA is the only state that had AVR in place almost exactly for the entire period between the end of the 2016 election and this election. The fact that we had the second highest turnout in the nation relative to 2016 totals may be reflective of that impact; where AVR availability overlapped almost perfectly with the 2-year cycle in GA, while other states had it in place prior to 2016, do not have it at all, or implemented it some time in 2017 or 2018.

So without those efforts from the campaign, it could have been worse (maybe even a weaker performance than Hillary; can't be for sure right now). I've spent substantial time in every election since 2010 canvassing, phone banking and/or (save for this cycle) having to manage those efforts in a heavily-GOP county, so I understand how you feel about hating the idea that it might have had no net impact. Ultimately, I hope that 2018 is a good lesson to Democrats that higher turnout is not something that is to be inherently worshiped or automatically considered a good thing. I think had turnout been in the 3.2-3.5m range, we would have likely won this.

[ON Progressive]

wtf i love libertarians now

http://brambleman.com/libertarian-candidate-endorses-democrat-lindy-miller-in-georgia-psc-race/

[Adam Griffin]

wtf i love libertarians now

http://brambleman.com/libertarian-candidate-endorses-democrat-lindy-miller-in-georgia-psc-race/

For what it's worth, he didn't "endorse" her, but said he was voting for her and asked his supporters to do the same (whatever distinction that amounts to):

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[QAnonKelly]

Went and voted just now. My county (Coweta) wasn’t even supposed to be open for early voting today but they did bc of the demand

[Adam Griffin]

Received my mail ballot today; mailing it tomorrow.


Here's something odd I've observed: not sure if it's a statewide effort or not. The GOP is mailing out applications to vote by mail (not the easy kind the Abrams campaign used, but the full official form) to people in my county. They just began hitting mailboxes late last week. I'm guessing they're trying to regain the advantage with this type of voting, but...

In my county as an example, our mail now automatically gets routed through Chattanooga regardless of whether it's intracounty or not. That means you're looking at 2 days to get an application to the elections office. If you assume another day to process it and 2 more days to get the ballot back to the voter, that's a total of 5 days. Then, it's 2 more days to get your ballot back to the board of elections. That's 7 days minimum for your ballot to get there once initiating the process!

I'm hoping this leads to some unintentional voter suppression on the part of the GOP to its voters. I realize that in other places, it may only take a day to deliver mail locally, but even then, they really shouldn't have waited this late in the game to mail out those applications. 

[Adam Griffin]

On the first day of early voting, 45,390 people voted (including returned mail ballots).

This compares to 158,721 people who voted on the first day of the final week of early voting in the general election.

Including mail ballots that are unreturned, a total of 154,580 ballots have been cast or requested.

[Bidenworth2020]

On the first day of early voting, 45,390 people voted (including returned mail ballots).

This compares to 158,721 people who voted on the first day of the final week of early voting in the general election.

Including mail ballots that are unreturned, a total of 154,580 ballots have been cast or requested.

goddamnit. SOS Raffensburger

[ON Progressive]

On the first day of early voting, 45,390 people voted (including returned mail ballots).

This compares to 158,721 people who voted on the first day of the final week of early voting in the general election.

Including mail ballots that are unreturned, a total of 154,580 ballots have been cast or requested.

Yikes. That's just brutal.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I knew this would happen. As has been mentioned Democratic voters in GA are terrible at turning out a second time. I only had faith in a runoff if Abrams was on the ballot but SOS race is just not high stakes enough to drive Abrams supporters out a second time, and John Barrow has been virtually silent on voter suppression since Abrams gave her speech acknowledging Kemp’s victory. They’ve been terrible. I had a group of people ready to canvass and the campaign had nothing organized for us.

https://twitter.com/tclarkgle/status/1067281645655355392

https://twitter.com/PoliticalSatyr/status/1067394229268373504