Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

What benefit is there for any white person in Georgia to vote for Democrats Stacey Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial election?

Maybe said white person decides to vote on the basis of the candidates character rather than the color of their skin? Just saying, could be?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

What benefit is there for any white person in Georgia to vote for Democrats Stacey Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial election?

Maybe said white person decides to vote on the basis of the candidates character rather than the color of their skin? Just saying, could be?

That's funny when black people vote 90% for black candidates, except for Steve Cohen.

Black people also routinely vote 90% for white candidates. The white candidates do have to be Democrats though. And they vote pretty much 90% against black candidates like Tim Scott, Michael Steele, etc, when those candidates are Republicans.

So it seems to me that black people vote predominantly for Democrats and against Republicans. Who would have thunk it?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

What benefit is there for any white person in Georgia to vote for Democrats Stacey Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial election?

Maybe said white person decides to vote on the basis of the candidates character rather than the color of their skin? Just saying, could be?

That's funny when black people vote 90% for black candidates, except for Steve Cohen.

Black people also routinely vote 90% for white candidates. The white candidates do have to be Democrats though. And they vote pretty much 90% against black candidates like Tim Scott, Michael Steele, etc, when those candidates are Republicans.

So it seems to me that black people vote predominantly for Democrats and against Republicans. Who would have thunk it?

Fine, but by that argument a white person should not vote for Stacey Abrams because she's a Democrat.

You mean because all white people are Republicans?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Did somebody really merge both of bronz's GARBAGE THREADS into this sacred ground?

lol

Yeah, that is not ideal. I occasionally look in here to browse the various high quality posts and look for informed updates on GA-GOV, but then I have to sift through all that complete junk. Mods, please don't do that in the future.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Harry Enten thinks Abrams could win in a run-off. This seems to make sense abstractly (drop-off from a Presidential election to a runoff is not the same as drop-off from a midterm to a runoff). But does it make sense in practice, my dear Gawgans?

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1037832535286456320

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[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I posted some GA returns-by-county data on the early/absentee thread. It is long (listing numbers for every county), so rather than posting the list of all the data here as well, I will just link to it here:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=301469.msg6447471#msg6447471

It looks like it partially duplicates some of what Fmr. Pres. Griff has already done, but also is a bit different. My observations were:

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[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

One thing that is really interesting about the early voting so far is the gender gap (not in support, but in turnout).

Women are about 51% of the overall population (probably about the same in GA), but so far 58.4% of voters in GA are women, 40.1% are men, and 1.5% are unknown. That is a 1.45 to 1 ratio!!!

For mail ballots, that probably skews somewhat more female than other votes and early votes are likely to, because it (I presume) skews old, and women have longer average life expectancy than men.

But even with that, it is an incredible turnout gap by sex. I do not expect it to hold at that sort of absurd ratio, but the fact that it is so high now does suggest that by the time everyone votes, I would bet the sex composition of the electorate will probably settle at an unusually high ratio of women to men compared to previous elections.

And... if there is a high gender gap in vote preference combined with a high gender gap in turnout, your imagination can fill in the rest.


Just to put some more context on that, this is the sort of gender gap in composition of the electorate that you might expect from a Democratic primary in the South, not a General election.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I’d assume the gender gap comes from black people being the plurality atm

No doubt, but regardless it is still really impressive and striking. What would be really interesting is to see the %s black women/black men/white women/white men.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I just got home and saw that the Abrams campaign sent me a reminder to return my ballot. Already turned in but wow at the earnestness of getting each and every vote. She rocks!

It is nice to see that the flyer says:

"Who you vote for is private, but whether or not you vote is public record. We know you're a voter who has already taken the step of requesting a ballot in this election. Please return your ballot so that you can be sure the public records show you voted again this year."

They are using what works. That gives me increased confidence in their ground operation, they are going to turn out voters.

Also it is interesting that she has a "State of Georgia" seal on it. That is the sort of thing that, if Ted Cruz did it, liberals would be in an uproar over. But it may make voters look at it more carefully when they first see it, and then read the rest.

I think Abrams is going to win this thing.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Looking at the 5 big metro counties, the white share of the electorate in VBM seems to be higher there than it is statewide; inversely, the non-white share of VBMs is lower there:

"The Big 5" (Fulton/Dekalb/Clayton/Gwinnett/Cobb) VBM Returns
44.4% White

GA Outside "The Big 5" VBM Returns
44.1% White

And here are the 2017 Census estimates:

"The Big 5" (Fulton/Dekalb/Clayton/Gwinnett/Cobb) 2017 Pop
37.2% White

GA Outside "The Big 5" 2017 Pop
61.5% White

Think about that for a second.

Yeah, that is definitely amazingly good news. The early voting in GA so far basically looks much more like a Democratic primary than a general election, which is just completely nuts. Hopefully the early voting in person looks similarly good once that starts - if so, Abrams should be golden for the win. And if so, hopefully in the future other Dems will follow her strategy (and also do so in other similar states like NC, FL, and TX).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

AJC has a new poll out exclusively of women tomorrow.

I have an idea. They can partner with the AARP and get a solid majority of the electorate.

More likely they would do the opposite, and poll only female Seniors. Just what we need, a poll of only female Seniors!

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

AJC has a new poll out exclusively of women tomorrow.

I have an idea. They can partner with the AARP and get a solid majority of the electorate.

More likely they would do the opposite, and poll only female Seniors. Just what we need, a poll of only female Seniors!

They should combine forces with MoScout and poll only one state senate district.

Brilliant. A Latino Decisions-AARP-MoScout poll for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution of only Latino female Seniors in 1 Senate district. Make it a Senate district somewhere in rural Georgia where there is a really low Latino population, and maybe it will be possible for it to be a poll of only a single voter.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/gtryan/status/1051295857591627776

Trying to read the tea leaves...

Liberty should be because of Fort Stewart - those are probably not per se unlikely voters, but people who moved there recently because of the military base.

Decatur - in SW GA, large black population, sounds promising?

Lowndes - new registrant college students at Valdosta St. (Historically black college)? Sounds very promising.

Morgan - I am not sure that one is so great, it is a rural county south of Athens and East of Atlanta, but not with a particularly high African American population. Any explanation for this one?

Clayton - Like with Liberty County, this is probably not just unlikely voters per se, but people who moved there recently and registered recently, because it has high African American population growth (South Atlanta suburbs). Most Dem county in GA, freedom county!

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Early voting line in Newton County is all the way down the block. Love it!

Pics or it didn't happen. I want to see huge lines of people lining up to vote early like in 2008. Then we will know it is real.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/PoliticallyGa/status/1051873595872432128

Apparently in 2016, the wait time for the LAST day of early voting in Cobb County were up to 3 hours:

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/you-plan-voting-today-cobb-pack-your-patience/AHo7nPe9Ypq99YzMcFxqMI/

I couldn't find information about the first day after a brief search. Are the lines more likely to be longest on the first day or the last day? Anyway, this provides some basis for comparison.

It will be interesting to see the #s tonight, looking forward to it.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So at least triple what it was in 2014?  That's nuts.

Beautiful amazing. Any idea the #s in previous presidential years? 2016 but maybe also 2008?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So of the new voters today (backing out the numbers from subtracting what is on georgiavotes from what Fmr. Pres. Griff posted yesterday), it looks like 60% were white, 29.6% black, 1.1% Hispanic, 1.0% Asian, 8.3% Other.

Meh I dunno, I would have hoped for a higher African American share there.

White   46,177   60.0%
Black      22,771   29.6%
Hispanic   826      1.1%
Asian      735      1.0%
Other   6,420   8.3%

The absolute #s are certainly impressive, but it seems a bit less good than the mail ballots were going so far. This is probably hurt by the problems in Fulton, I guess, and maybe still hurricane damage in the black belt.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Yeah, picking out a couple of dozen populated counties, the heavily-GOP counties are essentially all exceeding the statewide overperformance compared to 2014 (Hall and Columbia are the exceptions), and the heavily-Democratic counties are essentially all underperforming (with the exception of Fulton and Clayton). Not good! Let's hope the rubes are just dumping early and it's not a trend.

Yeah, that doesn't sound too good for Abrams. Has Kemp's campaign been focusing on turning out lower propensity Conservative whites at all? If not, then at least on the bright side the ones who are voting are more likely to be people who were going to vote anyway.

The most optimistic way to interpret this for Abrams is that of the 121,172 whites who have voted, the % of whom voted on election day in 2014 is about only 23.4% didn't vote in 2014, whereas among the non-whites who have already voted, significantly higher shares are 2014 non-voters. And in addition, the % of Whites who voted on election day in 2014 is about 1.5 times as much as the % of non-whites who voted on election day in 2014. So that does suggest at least *some* higher degree of cannibalization of the white Election Day vote as compared to the non-white Election Day vote is going on here.

But still, I would really like to see the Black share of early voters at 30%+

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

There may be some cannibalization, but there are also a lot of first-time whites coming out as well: in raw numbers, enough to cancel out the gains in this category by the rest and then some.

Can you be more specific about which gains you are referring to in the bolded/underlined part above?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

There may be some cannibalization, but there are also a lot of first-time whites coming out as well: in raw numbers, enough to cancel out the gains in this category by the rest and then some.

Can you be more specific about which gains you are referring to in the bolded/underlined part above?

For now, the amount of non-2014 white voters is enough to cancel out the massive gains from non-white voters who did not vote in 2014.

There are 28,345 white voters who didn't vote at all in 2014 and 23,066 black voters who didn't vote at all in 2014. Suppose Whites are voting for Kemp 75-25 and African Americans are voting for Abrams 90-10 (it is really probably more like 95-5, but suppose 90-10).

That gives you 7086 white voters for Abrams and 21259 white voters for Kemp. And it gives you 20759 black voters for Abrams and 2307 for Kemp. In total, that is 27846 for Abrams, and 23565 for Kemp.

So among people who didn't vote at all in 2014 but have already voted in 2018, the African American Dem votes should be more than canceling out the White Rep votes. Then the other non-whites are just gravy on top of that for Abrams.

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I would think that is the case, at least to some degree, simply because non-2014 voters are more likely to be new registrants, and therefore to be younger. So, the whites who have already voted but didn't vote in 2014 are probably something more like 30%-35% Abrams (or maybe even a little bit more) than 25% Abrams.

So, under an optimistic but - I don't think - unrealistic scenario for Abrams, the 2014 non-voters are splitting something like this:

White: 35% Abrams, 65% Kemp
Black: 95% Abrams, 5% Kemp
Hispanic: 80% Abrams, 20% Kemp
Asian: 80% Abrams, 20% Kemp
Other: 50% Abrams, 50% Kemp

Overall, that gets you to 40,168 votes for Abrams (61.1%) and 25,531 votes for Kemp (38.9%).

That is a vote margin of 14,367. The total Republican vote margin in the 2014 Governors race was as 200,443, so that is 7.3% of the way to eliminating that margin (of course, Abrams really wants 50%+, not just to eliminate the margin).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Also, here are some reference points: I went back through my posts in 2014 to find the racial updates I posted for EV during that time. They'll be helpful for comparison in a few days:

OK, that is comforting, and that makes the 28% Black share yesterday look a lot better than it did. Hopefully that means that the African American vote share will go up this time as well as the early voting period goes on.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Out of the 86,308 people who voted in Georgia on Thursday, 24,684 (23% of the total) were in either Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton, or Clarke counties. Those counties are picked out with the assumption that voters in those counties are generally a bit more likely (to varying degrees) to be liberals than elsewhere in GA.

Of the 24,684 voters in those 6 counties, 10,258 (41.6%) were white, 10,854 (44.0%) were black, and the remaining 3,572 were Asian/Hispanic/Other (14.5%).

Of the 61,624 voters in the rest of Georgia, 43,612 (70.8%) were white, 12,981 (21.1%) were black, and the remaining 5,031 were Asian/Hispanic/Other (8.2%).


Turnout seems to have been particularly gangbusters in Fulton County, where there were 11,287 votes cast on Thursday (5,329 by whites, 4,139 by African Americans).

As a comparison, let's compare Fulton County to nearby Cherokee County (heavily white and Republican North Atlanta exurbs/suburbs). In 2016, there were 439k votes cast in Fulton and 113k votes cast in Cherokee. That is a little under 4 times as many votes in Fulton as in Cherokee in 2016...

So, you might think, that probably there would be a bit less than 4x as many early votes today in Fulton as in Cherokee counties...

But the actual numbers are 11,287 in Fulton, as compared to 1,442 in Cherokee...

That is almost 8x more in Fulton... So in comparison to Cherokee, Fulton is voting early at about double the rate (8x instead of 4x) that you might expect based on overall 2016 turnout.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1053282275704692736

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Freedom policy! I wish Dems would put that into law in the States they control.

Except, perhaps, they should only get the $ off if they actually vote.

More generally, perhaps all voters in general should receive a tax credit for voting, as a way to increase turnout. Although the 24th amendment prohibits poll taxes, it does not prohibit poll tax credits. Of course, if voters wanted to, they could always cast a blank ballot, and can vote for whoever they want. But give the people an incentive to vote and raise voter turnout.

Other benefits are already conferred on voters, though generally of a smaller nature. A simple example is giving voters a sticker for voting - a sticker is not worth much, but it is not nothing. It is a small benefit, but nonetheless is a benefit and establishes a precedent of giving voters a benefit for voting.

Seems like a good policy to me.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

This is encouraging. Hopefully it is not *just* a weekend thing and the trend continues over the next week.