Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Rookie Yinzer]

Is this Senate race going to a run off or are there enough votes still out in DeKalb/Fulton to nip this in the bud?

[S019]

Is this Senate race going to a run off or are there enough votes still out in DeKalb/Fulton to nip this in the bud?

Around 100 precints in Fulton and 70 in DeKalb are left, so it's possible

[Adam Griffin]

Is this Senate race going to a run off or are there enough votes still out in DeKalb/Fulton to nip this in the bud?

Still plenty out, but Ossoff's problem is that he's barely beating his opponent (which is the 50%+1 threshold) in Fulton/Dekalb/Clayton, and he's been sitting at like 48% for quite some time after ATL started reporting. I don't know which precincts are outstanding and which aren't, but given Ossoff's numbers haven't been exactly impressive (i.e. meaningful majorities) in most of the other metro counties around the state, I'd lean toward this being a runoff. Ossoff probably benefits more from a surplus of suburban white vote potentially being out there than urban black vote at this point.

Can't be overstated that there are still probably 300-400k votes out statewide, though.

[ON Progressive]

What is your view on the prospects of Keisha Waites in the runoff against Scott?

[Adam Griffin]

With regard to GA-13 runoff mentioned above, here is the percentage of the Democratic vote each county comprised in the 2018 gubernatorial election within the congressional district. While this isn't a perfect comparison for a primary, it's still approximate enough to perform some basic assessments.

23.73% Fulton
22.57% Clayton
21.37% Cobb
14.49% Douglas
13.87% Henry
03.97% Fayette

Since my previous GA-13 post, 10k more votes have dropped. Scott has dropped nearly another percentage point. And here is what each county comprises currently in the congressional primary:

28.97% Clayton (+6.4)
19.79% Fulton (-4.0)
16.97% Douglas (+2.4)
16.32% Henry (+2.5)
14.60% Cobb (-6.7)
03.33% Fayette (-0.7)

Fulton and Cobb are still way under-represented in reported votes, and these are Waites' two best counties. Clayton is waaay over-represented, which is Scott's best county (and the only one where he has a majority). Douglas and Henry are also over-represented, but Waites and Scott's totals there are very close to their district-wide figures right now.

This will definitely continue to get closer; Scott's dropping below 45% unless mail ballots are very favorable to him. Hell, he might end up closer to 40 than 45 when it's all done.

[Adam Griffin]

What is your view on the prospects of Keisha Waites in the runoff against Scott?

She'll be a big underdog, but Scott has done basically nothing during the primary. No campaigning, no debates (Sestak mentioned he hadn't raised any money either?). Many progressive and activist-oriented groups have long had problems with Scott's "blue dog" BS in a 70% Democratic district, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of in-state (and maybe out-of-state) money and energy pours her way - assuming she gets it together.

What's troublesome (as of the beginning of May):

The incumbent also faces a fundraising advantage. He had $281,877 in the bank at the end of the first quarter, compared to a -$3,685 balance logged by Peters, according to the Federal Elections Commission website.The site shows no reports from Owens since the end of September when he had a $14,529 balance, and it lists no documents for Waites.

She's since reported raising $875 as of 5/20 (with $0 cash on hand), while Scott had $240,000 on hand. Frankly embarrassing for somebody who served in the General Assembly.

[n1240]

Adam Griffin I raised concern in a different thread about GA-07 being called a runoff prematurely by AP, would you agree with my assessment? It seems like there may be around 23k outstanding uncounted mail-in votes in just the Gwinnett portion of the district (Forsyth has not counted their mail-in votes as well). Considering Bourdeaux's strength in the counted mail-in votes in Gwinnett and relatively strong numbers among early in-person voters as well, I imagine she should be able to exceed 50% and avoid the runoff?

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

[Landslide Lyndon]

Hahahaha!!!

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Raffensperger should be thrown promptly in jail by a Democratic appointed US Attorney if Biden wins. This is criminal negligence.

[Adam Griffin]

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

Literally don't believe any results you're currently seeing on elections websites (especially SoS: not sure WTF is wrong there).

See my post from Monday: there were over 60,000 GOP ballots mailed in GA-7 during early voting alone (and 63,000 DEM ballots mailed), so unless only a little over half of GOP mailed ballots were returned and literally no Republicans voted on Election Day in the district, those numbers are completely wack.

It would not surprise me if Democrats gained momentum from election day voting in a district like GA-7, though: young voters, Latinos and Asians in particular tend to vote more so on the day of an election than early (and certainly more so than via mail). This is why initial returns in many places were more favorable to Sanders before mail ballots started getting counted (also why ED vote in my home county of Whitfield - which has the highest Latino population % of any GA county - more often than not is a bit more favorable than EV; "early voting is for whites & blacks; election day voting is for Latinos and Asians").

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

Literally don't believe any results you're currently seeing on elections websites (especially SoS: not sure WTF is wrong there).

See my post from Monday: there were over 60,000 GOP ballots mailed in GA-7 during early voting alone (and 63,000 DEM ballots mailed), so unless only a little over half of GOP mailed ballots were returned and literally no Republicans voted on Election Day in the district, those numbers are completely wack.

It would not surprise me if Democrats gained momentum from election day voting in a district like GA-7, though: Latinos and Asians in particular tend to vote more so on the day of an election than early (and certainly more so than via mail). This is why initial returns in many places were more favorable to Sanders before mail ballots started getting counted (also why ED vote in my home county of Whitfield - which has the highest Latino population % of any GA county - more often than not is a bit more favorable than EV; "early voting is for whites & blacks; election day voting is for Latinos and Asians").

It has to be mostly Election Day votes, right? But this number is from both NYTimes and DDHQ, both reputable. GA SOS is way behind everyone else

[Adam Griffin]

Adam Griffin I raised concern in a different thread about GA-07 being called a runoff prematurely by AP, would you agree with my assessment? It seems like there may be around 23k outstanding uncounted mail-in votes in just the Gwinnett portion of the district (Forsyth has not counted their mail-in votes as well). Considering Bourdeaux's strength in the counted mail-in votes in Gwinnett and relatively strong numbers among early in-person voters as well, I imagine she should be able to exceed 50% and avoid the runoff?

I haven't been following granular precinct results for most of metro ATL, but given Bourdeaux is now much closer to 45% than 50%, I doubt even mail ballots would save her. I wrote a couple of weeks ago somewhere else how Lopez (Romero) was putting more work into the district than any other candidate in many ways, so it doesn't surprise me with her history of mobilizing Latinos in particular that she was able to secure 2nd place. Given Latinos heavily rely upon ED voting rather than EV (let alone mail), I'm sure the mail ballots will be more favorable to Bourdeaux (or at least less favorable to Brenda), but color me skeptical there are enough to clear 50%+1 (unless practically none of the mail ballots have been counted yet).

[Adam Griffin]

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

Literally don't believe any results you're currently seeing on elections websites (especially SoS: not sure WTF is wrong there).

See my post from Monday: there were over 60,000 GOP ballots mailed in GA-7 during early voting alone (and 63,000 DEM ballots mailed), so unless only a little over half of GOP mailed ballots were returned and literally no Republicans voted on Election Day in the district, those numbers are completely wack.

It would not surprise me if Democrats gained momentum from election day voting in a district like GA-7, though: Latinos and Asians in particular tend to vote more so on the day of an election than early (and certainly more so than via mail). This is why initial returns in many places were more favorable to Sanders before mail ballots started getting counted (also why ED vote in my home county of Whitfield - which has the highest Latino population % of any GA county - more often than not is a bit more favorable than EV; "early voting is for whites & blacks; election day voting is for Latinos and Asians").

It has to be mostly Election Day votes, right? But this number is from both NYTimes and DDHQ, both reputable. GA SOS is way behind everyone else

Ultimately DDHQ & NYT are likely extracting reports from individual counties; whatever hasn't been counted yet can't be reported. So the numbers can be both "reputable" and "completely incomplete".

When you say "it" has to be mostly ED votes, what do you mean by "it"? Of what has reported? Probably; early in-person votes tend to be the first reported, followed by election day votes, followed finally by mail/provisional ballots. I'd say virtually all of the in-person vote statewide is in at this point. We're just waiting on the remaining one-third to one-half of statewide mail ballots to be counted - which are disproportionately likely in the ATL metro.

Many counties had anywhere from 5-10x the number of mail ballots to count compared to past similar turnout elections. Just as an example, my county started tallying mail ballots at 9 AM Tuesday, and finished 13 hours later; in the 2018 general, they started when the polls closed and it took until nearly midnight to work through one-fifth the number of mail ballots we received in this primary. Now imagine you're in a county with many times that number but similar resources.

It would not surprise me if GA-7 had 140-150k voters across the two parties' primaries given population growth and sheer competition in the area once all ballots are counted (which, to address my previous post, would indicate a very large share of mail ballots haven't been counted yet). Those ballots will likely be more favorable to Bourdeaux, but I'm not sure the difference will be enough to matter in terms of 50%+1 (perhaps it could change the 2nd place contestant).  

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

In Gwinnett County as a whole, Democrats are currently outvoting Republicans 65-35.

Cobb County is smaller but noticeable 59-41

Republicans ahead 52-48 in Fayette County and 68-32 in Forsyth County

[DaWN]

Democrats outvoted Republicans in GA-07 by over 15000 votes, or 59-41

[Adam Griffin]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

[Adam Griffin]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

Why didn’t they just void all the March ballots and just start it clean?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

Why didn’t they just void all the March ballots and just start it clean?

I voted in the Presidential primary on the first day of early voting in March, before postponement.  Why should my legitimate early vote be canceled?

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

Why didn’t they just void all the March ballots and just start it clean?

I voted in the Presidential primary on the first day of early voting in March, before postponement.  Why should my legitimate early vote be canceled?

Because wouldn’t some people accidentally vote for President twice?

[Adam Griffin]

Something I haven't seen mentioned thus far: the Democratic undervote between presidential and senatorial contests. Despite the presidential contest being at the top of the ballot, roughly 7% of Georgia Democrats skipped the presidential contest but cast votes in the Senate contest. This is...substantial. If it were a general election, I'd be screaming voter fraud. Amico sued in 2018 over roughly half this discrepancy - which was an unprecedented discrepancy then.

So here is potentially a big part of this discrepancy I discovered while going over the midnight happenings in my own county just now. Apparently the mail ballots that were cast for the presidential primary prior to the cancellation/move/merger of the pres & state primaries have not been counted (at least in Whitfield!) yet; they'll be counted today. If that is a common occurrence throughout the state, then it could explain why the presidential primary raw turnout is 7% lower than the Senate turnout; when people who voted by mail in Feb/Mar cast their ballots, it was just for President. If those ballots haven't been counted/reconciled, then of course the presidential totals would be lower. However, I don't know if this is something happening on a grand scale throughout the state or just something decided in my own county.

Why didn’t they just void all the March ballots and just start it clean?

I voted in the Presidential primary on the first day of early voting in March, before postponement.  Why should my legitimate early vote be canceled?

Because wouldn’t some people accidentally vote for President twice?

They screened for that on the front-end. I voted early by mail in the PPP as well, and my second ballot only contained the non-presidential primary portions. The fact that my county (and/or many counties, or even all counties) broke this up and have yet to count the PPP-exclusive ballots feels more like an easily-segmented clerical decision to get them out of the office before sunrise this morning.

Again, it can't be overstated: using my county as an example, they never handled more than 1,200 mail ballots in any election (that was the 2018 general). Including the early mail PPP ballots, they had more than 6,200 this time to sort through (5,800 post-merger mail ballots and 400 pre-merger PPP ballots), despite not having any additional manpower to count them. That's why they had to begin counting at 9 AM instead of 7 PM, using both my local party and the local GOP's volunteers as resources to do so. Each candidate/contest choice on every ballot has to be verified and agreed upon by at least two separate individuals in order to be recorded.

[OneJ]

[snip]

Idrk what this says more about: the fact that Waites got such a large percentage of the vote without having raised almost any money and coasting on her name recognition or Scott doing surprisingly bad in a district where it's arguably one of the districts where it's tougher to give an entrenched incumbent like him a run for their money.

By some miracle, hopefully Waites takes this more seriously and she just might win this.

[Holmes]

In Gwinnett County as a whole, Democrats are currently outvoting Republicans 65-35.

Cobb County is smaller but noticeable 59-41

Republicans ahead 52-48 in Fayette County and 68-32 in Forsyth County

This is brutal for Republicans if replicated in November.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Ossoff is at 49.83 now....