Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[RINO Tom]

How long has "Demosaur" been around?  I feel like I have never heard it until this year, LOL.

This was the first mention of it on Atlas:

Arizona and Georgia are turning purple slowly and the Republicans have to make up ground in the MW...

Hillary and Schweitzer may have appeal to the Demosaur areas, and a Hispanic Republican could go good in the SW.

It was mentioned a few more times from 2012-2017, but only got a lot of mentions in 2018.

I fully endorse it, LOL.  Very hilarious.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Post-election analysis from TargetSmart:

https://medium.com/@tombonier/targetsmart-analysis-shows-a-younger-and-more-diverse-georgia-electorate-fb38bdb6224e

Theorizes if white share of electorate falls the same level it did 2014->2016->2018 and Dems maintain same levels of support from young and non-white voters, Abrams would defeat Kemp in a rematch.

https://twitter.com/gwlauren/status/1071134413902266369

This article states that the Abrams campaign believe they got 1/3 of the white vote in Cobb and Gwinnett, quadrupled Hispanic and Asian turnout in Gwinnett vs 2014, and doubled black turnout in Henry vs 2014.

https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/inside-stacey-abrams-42m-campaign-for-governor/PSPSAJkP0AdziwqWvL3m5O/?ecmp=pg&utm_medium=social&utm_source=pg_fb

[ON Progressive]

Post-election analysis from TargetSmart:

https://medium.com/@tombonier/targetsmart-analysis-shows-a-younger-and-more-diverse-georgia-electorate-fb38bdb6224e

Theorizes if white share of electorate falls the same level it did 2014->2016->2018 and Dems maintain same levels of support from young and non-white voters, Abrams would defeat Kemp in a rematch.

https://twitter.com/gwlauren/status/1071134413902266369

This article states that the Abrams campaign believe they got 1/3 of the white vote in Cobb and Gwinnett, quadrupled Hispanic and Asian turnout in Gwinnett vs 2014, and doubled black turnout in Henry vs 2014.

https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/inside-stacey-abrams-42m-campaign-for-governor/PSPSAJkP0AdziwqWvL3m5O/?ecmp=pg&utm_medium=social&utm_source=pg_fb

That AJC article says 70% (!) of DeKalb whites voted for Abrams? That is absurdly high.

[Adam Griffin]

That AJC article says 70% (!) of DeKalb whites voted for Abrams? That is absurdly high.

To be fair, Carter won 65% of them in 2014. It certainly seems crazy on the surface but not out of line with Dekalb's prior voting tendencies and the trends of this election.

The SoS demographic data by precinct and the like actually came out a couple of days ago, but is only available as of now to those who have paid for it and the like via voter file software (still not publicly available). As such, there's still a lot of modeling of the electorate going on, but I will point out that in 2016, the SoS said that 30% of the electorate was black (as opposed to Bonier's claims that it was only 28.6%).

If anything, modeling generally increases the share of non-white voters compared to SoS figures by attempting to categorize "other/unknown" voters (and because it's also likely that nobody's lying about being black on VR forms). As such, I'd say modeling racial data is less useful in GA given that we have official stats on it. However, because of the "other/unknown" issue, the real share of black voters (not only in 2018, but in 2016, 2012, 2008, etc) is higher than the explicitly-black percentage quoted by the state.

[GeorgiaModerate]

After counting absentees and provisionals in the HD-28 Republican primary do-over (which was ordered by a judge after some voters in the May primary received ballots for the wrong district), the incumbent trails by...

2 votes. 

This is effectively the general election for the seat, as no Democrat filed in this extremely Republican district.

https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/georgia-house-election-over-separated-just-two-votes/DKecF1f6dzulYMEWvXyjAK/

[Florida Man for Crime]

This article has some estimates apparently from the Abrams campaign (internal estimates) on what % of the White vote Abrams got in various counties:

https://www.theroot.com/nobody-should-be-talking-about-beto-and-gillum-in-2020-1831061434

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Adam Griffin]

The precinct level demographic data is now available! At first glance, it looks like we could have had some improvement for Democrats in terms of non-white voters but in-depth inspection of individual precincts will be required to determine whether this is the case.

Essentially, the white share of the vote dropped substantially compared to 2014, while the black share of the vote remained static. The Latino and Asian shares of the vote both doubled compared to 2014, and the "other" share went from 5.8% to 8.1%. This essentially means that about half the reduction of the white share of the electorate came from increased Latino and Asian participation, while the other half came from an increase in "others". As we've talked about before, these other voters are disproportionately first-time voters but they also tend to resemble the overall emerging electorate of the counties in which they're voting.



As I hypothesized early on, this was essentially a 2016 electorate. I'm also a bit embarrassed that I somehow confused the 2016 exit polls with the 2016 SoS data when I've been saying that blacks were 30% of voters in 2016 - whoops! In reality, that 30% figure was likely correct when including "others", but still was an apples-to-oranges comparison to 2008 & 2012.

Certainly, there are many black voters and non-white voters among the "other" category, but the same can also be said for white voters as well. As this other category continues to increase from election to election, taking SoS data at face value and comparing to past cycles becomes more difficult without substantial modeling. Further analysis at the county-level and precinct-level will shed more insight, but if I had to guess...the "other" category is probably closer to 50% white & 35% black.

And here are my initial projections/modeling that sorts out the "others" into one of the other four categories:

[Florida Man for Crime]

And here are my initial projections/modeling that sorts out the "others" into one of the other four categories:

Wow, whether one looks at your approximate assignment of the "Other" or at the numbers including "Other," those are some very impressive numbers on the non-white turnout. Better than Presidential, in a midterm year!

On the other hand, that does mean that there is probably only fairly limited room for improvement in 2020. So GA is not outright impossible for the Dems to win in 2020, but getting that last 1% is not going to be easy.

[Adam Griffin]

So, I'm running some top-line comparisons with the above data to see which groups actually contributed to the margin shift relative to 2016, and I'm finding some interesting data. First of all, it's crucial to point out that exit polls have margins of error, so there could be issues with that. Ultimately, diving into county-level and precinct-level analysis will give us a more accurate picture, but as of now...

The margin shifted by 3.7 points to Democrats between 2016 and 2018 (Trump won by 5.1; Kemp by 1.4). Using the data I have available from exit polls - with a correction for obviously incorrect Latino/Asian support in them - and demographic turnout reports, I'm seeing that Latino and Asian voters were responsible for 0.7 points (19% of shift) and blacks 2.9 points (78% of shift). That's essentially all of the shift in margin.

This means one of three things:

• There was no improvement among whites (statewide) when compared to Clinton, and either the 21% figure in 2016 and/or the 25% figure in 2018 are wrong (meaning that rural whites completely offset suburban/urban whites)
• Black support of Abrams is actually lower than the exit polls suggest (i.e. not 93-95%, but closer to 90%)
• The exit polls are right, the election was stolen, and Abrams actually won by 1.7 points

Of course, it could be a small bit of multiple things including exit poll error, but it will be interesting to see what more detailed analysis produces. Ultimately, I think this may be a situation where there are big differences in terms of which groups contributed to improvements in margins for either candidate based on geography.

[Florida Man for Crime]

https://medium.com/@tombonier/targetsmart-analysis-shows-a-younger-and-more-diverse-georgia-electorate-fb38bdb6224e

[Adam Griffin]

https://medium.com/@tombonier/targetsmart-analysis-shows-a-younger-and-more-diverse-georgia-electorate-fb38bdb6224e

I think I may have mentioned this here a few days ago, but I'd point out that I take issue with Targetsmart's racial modeling for GA. Besides the fact that GA actually releases its racial data, their modeling seems to reduce the black electorate relative to the SoS turnout totals. That almost certainly wouldn't be the case, as you'd expect the real share of the black electorate to be larger than the SoS reported figure (again, because of the "other" category containing voters across all racial lines).

Their modeling is great to have in situations where this data isn't available from the state (which is almost every other state), but it seems to be wonky here at best. They may just be using their formulas without incorporating the state's data, but it's almost guaranteed that there aren't tons of people lying about being black on their voter registration forms.

I assume their first-time stats are more on point (I see their black/white shares of the first-time electorate - 50/35 - match up perfectly with my estimation of the "other" category, which tend to be one and the same), but when in doubt, go with the SoS totals for race, gender and age (and in the case of the latter two, there's little need for interpretation due to the dreaded "other" dynamic).

[Florida Man for Crime]

https://medium.com/@tombonier/targetsmart-analysis-shows-a-younger-and-more-diverse-georgia-electorate-fb38bdb6224e

I think I may have mentioned this here a few days ago, but I'd point out that I take issue with Targetsmart's racial modeling for GA. Besides the fact that GA actually releases its racial data, their modeling seems to reduce the black electorate relative to the SoS turnout totals. That almost certainly wouldn't be the case, as you'd expect the real share of the black electorate to be larger than the SoS reported figure (again, because of the "other" category containing voters across all racial lines).

Their modeling is great to have in situations where this data isn't available from the state (which is almost every other state), but it seems to be wonky here at best. They may just be using their formulas without incorporating the state's data, but it's almost guaranteed that there aren't tons of people lying about being black on their voter registration forms.

I assume their first-time stats are more on point (I see their black/white shares of the first-time electorate - 50/35 - match up perfectly with my estimation of the "other" category, which tend to be one and the same), but when in doubt, go with the SoS totals for race, gender and age (and in the case of the latter two, there's little need for interpretation due to the dreaded "other" dynamic).

Voter file race modeling incorporates actual hard race data like in GA when available (unless TargetSmart is doing something really weird and unusual, which I doubt). I don't really see the inconsistency between this and the #s you posted. From their graph, they appear to have about 31% of the electorate being African American, which is about what you have and what the SOS has. The difference, if there is one, in comparison to your estimates is that they may be assigning a bit fewer of the "other" to be African Americans. But this is a pretty marginal difference at most.

[Adam Griffin]

Voter file race modeling incorporates actual hard race data like in GA when available (unless TargetSmart is doing something really weird and unusual, which I doubt). I don't really see the inconsistency between this and the #s you posted. From their graph, they appear to have about 31% of the electorate being African American, which is about what you have and what the SOS has. The difference, if there is one, in comparison to your estimates is that they may be assigning a bit fewer of the "other" to be African Americans. But this is a pretty marginal difference at most.

Yeah, my bad: either I initially misread the stats they posted a few days ago or they've tweaked them (I think it's the former). Their model shares are larger than the SoS figures.

Nevertheless, I would still highlight that their modeled numbers are in my view too low; for them to be spot-on, you'd need the black share of first-time and/or "other" voters to be considerably smaller than the electorate and population at-large (in reality, they're a larger share). It's not a huge difference in absolute terms, but given GA's rigid black floor/ceiling over the past decade of elections, it's actually a pretty big difference:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Their figures for both elections are 1.2-1.6 points lower than my modeling (31.8 and 30.2, respectively), which - for theirs to be accurate - would mean that something like only 15-20% of the "other" and/or first-time voters were black. That just simply doesn't fit with what we know about Georgia's emerging electorate (or even necessarily with their own first-time voter data that shows 35% of those voters were black).

[Rookie Yinzer]

Abrams on Samantha Bee’s show the other day:

https://youtu.be/zQ_newQ5exo

She is definitely running against Kemp in a rematch.

[RogueBeaver]

Ossoff is considering a Senate bid.

[_]

Ossoff is considering a Senate bid.

N O

[Rookie Yinzer]

Ossoff is considering a Senate bid.

N O

Why not? Genuinely asking. I probably won’t for him in a primary.

[Zaybay]

Ossoff is considering a Senate bid.

N O

Why not? Genuinely asking. I probably won’t for him in a primary.

Boring, moderate, uninspiring, uninteresting, lost a special that should have been his with millions backing him while McBath was able to take it in the general, etc.

Just a poor candidate all around.

[lfromnj]

yeah there is no excuse to lose that SE. IT was a trump +2 seat.

[GeorgiaModerate]

yeah there is no excuse to lose that SE. IT was a trump +2 seat.

If Ossoff had moved into the district 6 months before the election, he'd have won.  The carpetbagging accusations hurt him (even though he lived only a few blocks outside the district boundary). 

[MycroftCZ]

Ossoff is not going to win statewide. Can Democrats please stop considering losers as major candidates ?

[Zaybay]

yeah there is no excuse to lose that SE. IT was a trump +2 seat.

If Ossoff had moved into the district 6 months before the election, he'd have won.  The carpetbagging accusations hurt him (even though he lived only a few blocks outside the district boundary). 

In a close election, you can say anything hurt him. You could blame the amount of attention, his residency, his lack of engagement with AA voters, etc. All that matters, really, is that Ossoff wasnt able to win against Handel, while McBath, in the general, was able.

[lfromnj]

Ossoff is not going to win statewide. Can Democrats please stop considering losers as major candidates ?

I mean some candidates like beto had a very impressive run but I am getting sick of all the loser retreads.
Both ossof and gillum are massive failures.

Id say Abrams was ok enough to get a 2nd chance but thats it.

[Zaybay]

Ossoff is not going to win statewide. Can Democrats please stop considering losers as major candidates ?

I mean some candidates like beto had a very impressive run but I am getting sick of all the loser retreads.
Both ossof and gillum are massive failures.

Id say Abrams was ok enough to get a 2nd chance but thats it.

TBF, most people asking for him to retread want him to run against Al Lawson.

[MycroftCZ]

Ossoff is not going to win statewide. Can Democrats please stop considering losers as major candidates ?

I mean some candidates like beto had a very impressive run but I am getting sick of all the loser retreads.
Both ossof and gillum are massive failures.

Id say Abrams was ok enough to get a 2nd chance but thats it.

TBF, most people asking for him to retread want him to run against Al Lawson.

Abrams and Beto are fine because they over performed in states where it's hard for a Democrat to win. Ossoff and Gillum both under performed and I think they need to aim for a smaller office before running for a big one. Ossoff should run for state Senate or Congress again. Gillum should aim for Congress too, or a low-level statewide office.