Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Adam Griffin]

Judging from tonight, Cagle's "support" in the suburbs was about an inch deep.

LOL yes. Between Stewart's support in NoVA and Kemp's support in ATL and other GA suburbs, I'm not sure why so many think the Cagle/Kemp debate was going to make a difference in the suburbs. Their minds are already made up one way or another.

[Adam Griffin]

It wouldn't surprise me if Abrams won Gwinnett and Cobb. But that's not enough, as we saw with Hillary.

She'll be winning those while also turning out black voters downstate. The main PAC planning to flood the state with resources are exclusively focusing on turning out black voters in places in and around Macon, Columbus, Albany, Americus, Valdosta, and Savannah.

ETA: And Augusta and the band of rural majority black counties near it.

I'm skeptical that the votes are there (in those locations, specifically). Basically, Abrams needs everything to go in her favor (i.e. pull Clinton '16 margins in Georgia counties that swung to Clinton, and Obama '12 margins in the rest) - and then will still need an additional 70k votes on top of that to secure a majority (using the 2014 total turnout as a baseline here).

There are really only a few counties south of the metro where there is any meaningful population. The Fall Line/Black Belt (outside of Muscogee, Houston/Bibb, and Columbia/Richmond) is pretty empty. The space directly due north and south of that is as well. Of course the southern interior is empty and very hostile as well. There's the coast, of course (where I think some gains can be made)...but even if the votes can be mined out of those areas, it might only be enough to make up the difference between Carter/Nunn '14 and Obama '12 - meaning she would still need the 70k votes from elsewhere.

Sooner or later, I will be wrong - such the evolution of GA's urbanization and population growth - but I still don't believe that a Democrat can win statewide yet without true investment across the entire state (yes, that means on-the-ground activity in hostile North GA as well, which has taken almost an entire vote away for every vote gained statewide over the past 10 years).

A good example is to look at what Obama and Clinton did in NC and VA, which are comparably-sized: they had 30-50 offices across the entire state and sunk in tens of millions of dollars, along with hundreds of full-time staff. F[inks]ing Galax, VA (population 7,000) had a full-time field office that I passed by on the way to the DNC convention! By contrast, Georgia usually has 10 (opened by the DPG, with candidates who actually have resources basing themselves in the exact same areas). Until we see that kind of activity (which doesn't exist in GA yet; field offices opening in Dahlonega, Gainesville, Rome, Dalton, Jesup, Thomasville, etc), I'm unfortunately very skeptical.

I'm not trying to rain on the parade. I'm just frustrated as an active Democrat in a part of the state that gets neglected - despite it playing a huge role in why the state shifted to the GOP in the first place - and it's very difficult to work with minimal to no resources at the local level. Despite the fact that whites are more Democratic in this part of the state (at least averaged over the past decade) than anywhere else but the urban areas and there's huge Latino growth, it's written off as Red Hell when gains could be made that would significantly weaken GOP margins. I understand part of it is because Dems don't know how to campaign outside core areas anymore and another part is the lack of resources, but alas.

[Adam Griffin]

Thats been whats occurring in the special elections around the country so far, so I would expect this to hold true.

Perhaps so, but as I've said before, GA has been bucking the trend this cycle in some ways. Nevertheless, a couple of the aforementioned urban areas (specifically Columbus, Macon and Augusta) have very naturally weak turnout and performance, which I think makes it harder to maximize vote share there than in other areas. If you look at Obama's performance and compare that to midterms - or compare the counties' populations and votes to similarly-sized counties - it's pretty abysmal.

Of course, it's even tougher to work, canvass and organize in rural areas with less population density...but in GA, I truly think it's going to take an effort encompassing all of that across the entire state to break through in the next cycle or two.

[Adam Griffin]

I understand your frustration. That's why I cooled off on Stacey Evans because I felt she would get lazy down the stretch and take certain areas for granted or throw in the towel on other areas. I believe Abrams will work for every vote she can from Dalton to Brunswick and everywhere in between. I certainly hope to see the DPG launch a massive field operation over the next few weeks. We have a huge hill to climb!

Truth be told, I did as well. I still voted for Evans simply because she was the "hometown girl", but the fact that Abrams visited my county 3 times in 2017 and once more before the primary (and Evans visited once in the summer of last year, because we asked) told me a lot of what I needed to know. I was very impressed with Abrams' initial efforts. I hate to say that we haven't seen any action since, but I'm a realist and I get why...but I'm definitely getting the feeling that 2018 is going to be "ignore the north" (from all candidates) above and beyond anything we've seen in past cycles - and I understand the argument/basis of why; I just don't think it's going to pan out how they think it will.

[Adam Griffin]

LMAO that "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" meme really worked:

CANDIDATE   VOTE   PCT.   
Geoff Duncan   278,750   50.1%   
David Shafer   277,110   49.9   

[Adam Griffin]

Democratic SSS runoff:

[Adam Griffin]

And yeah, that attack ad against Kemp was pretty bad: I thought it was just an online ad at first!

Yikes. The lack of narration and the wimpy music make it something easily ignored by viewers during a commercial break (except for Kemp's words, which make it free advertising for him). Maybe the DGA's dumb enough to turn it verbatim into a radio spot!

[Adam Griffin]

The anti-Abrams ad was better?  What was the message...that she's propped up by coastal elitists and loved by Hillary?  

That's been the GOP's boilerplate message since 1992.

Unlike the anti-Kemp ad, that one actually tells you what it wants you to glean from the message. Whether it's an old message or not doesn't matter (in fact, I'd argue old messages that survive are even more effective).

Commercials are made first and foremost to stick in your head when they're not in front of you - other than some forgettable tune and Brian Kemp's own words, what is memorable or mnemonic about that ad?

That's precisely why the "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" attack campaign was so effective and ultimately cost him the race. Practically everybody in GA had heard about "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" between the time of the primary and the runoff. They probably couldn't tell you why he was shady, but they knew he was in fact "shady".

[Adam Griffin]

The anti-Abrams ad was better?  What was the message...that she's propped up by coastal elitists and loved by Hillary?  

That's been the GOP's boilerplate message since 1992.

Unlike the anti-Kemp ad, that one actually tells you what it wants you to glean from the message. Whether it's an old message or not doesn't matter (in fact, I'd argue old messages that survive are even more effective).

Commercials are made first and foremost to stick in your head when they're not in front of you - other than some forgettable tune and Brian Kemp's own words, what is memorable or mnemonic about that ad?

That's precisely why the "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" attack campaign was so effective and ultimately cost him the race. Practically everybody in GA had heard about "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" between the time of the primary and the runoff. They probably couldn't tell you why he was shady, but they knew he was in fact "shady".

I suppose that's true as well.  Hopefully Abrams HQ gets the message that the ad sucks and comes up with something more effective.

Well, thankfully this wasn't an Abrams ad (as I understand it), but rather a DGA ad. But if Democrats are going to be pouring money into GA, then they need to do it right. Voters are stupid: Democrats need to learn to lower the bar in their discourse (and that includes not making voters read things on-screen for 30 seconds at a time).

[Adam Griffin]

Does anyone remember what times GA was called for Deal and Trump?

It was fairly early for both Deal and Perdue as I recall. Pretty sure Perdue was called first at around 9:30. I'm wanting to say Deal was around 10:00. That moment is kinda etched into my memory from our party HQ celebration night.


EDIT: Yeah, looks like Perdue was called just before 9:30 - USA Today threw their article up at 9:24 PM.

For Deal, though...Vox announced Deal had won at 11:16 PM...that doesn't seem right so I'm going to keep looking; didn't think it was that much later than Perdue (and doesn't really make sense given that the two candidates didn't over/under-perform one another by much at all statewide or in any particular region). Looks like the Deal campaign declared victory at 9:37 PM.

[Adam Griffin]

At the Abrams Dalton event: it's almost over. Got a lot to say later!

[Adam Griffin]

Just pointing out: this is the 4th visit to Whitfield County by Abrams since her campaign began (and 5th visit by her campaign).

So the Abrams campaigned first contacted the county party about this event on Monday morning. It may be different in metro ATL, but it is very hard to get a good crowd for anything in rural and Republican areas with 48 hours notice. I will say this is my biggest functional complaint about the campaign: they spring stuff without much notice at all (more so than the average statewide candidate).

Nevertheless, the county party used its email list and blasted a few thousand people with robocalls, and the Abrams campaign seemed to be running social media ads and blasting emails of the own.

The room reserved had 130 seats put out. In the end, 200 people showed up. In Dalton. With 2 days notice. With rain pouring. I can speak from personal experience that that is a very good and large crowd given the circumstances.

[Adam Griffin]

Griff--Thanks for the pictures and information.  A very good turnout in early August in the pouring rain (and the weather is really bad this week in north Georgia).

FYI--in 2016, Clinton got 26% of the vote in Whitfield County (lowest Dem vote share since 1972) and lost by a margin of 13500 votes.  If Abrams can reduce the margins by 15-20% in places like Whitfield, it will go a long way.

I think she can make some real progress here in Whitfield especially. Another good metric to look at is the gubernatorial elections. In 2010, it was 72.3%-22.9%; in 2014, 66.9%-28.6%. That was the biggest swing of any county in GA in the 2014 gubernatorial race in favor of Carter, made possible by a resurgent local Democratic effort and a field operation of a couple of dozen dedicated volunteers with a $6000 field budget. I'm not saying we'll be able to replicate that margin swing again, but who knows...

[Adam Griffin]

Were there voter registration people there, or at least people to make sure this crowd is registered?

Personal information was collected which I'm sure will be fed into the campaign's existing database. Any non-RVs will likely be contacted (I hope). I'm willing to bet based on the look and feel of the crowd that almost everybody there who is of age is already registered...especially with AVR being the reality in GA for almost 2 years now, we're not far away from effectively having full registration in the state.

The 8-year driver's license is all you can get now (they jettisoned the 5-year option; implemented post-AVR), and there's hordes of people who will be renewing over the next 2-3 years.

[Adam Griffin]

I just watched the video of the event her campaign posted (because I'm weird and can't get enough of her). I absolutely LOVED her response to the lady's question about Stone Mountain. She explains the historical context of Confederate monuments and refuses to backtrack or back down (and then redirected focus back to REAL issues). I know Kemp is going to bring it up at a debate and she is going to eviscerate him.

I loved how she got the loudest applause when she mentioned expanding Medicaid. When I canvass for her that's what gets the most passionate response.

FTR, that was a Republican plant. I saw her yakking afterward with several of the county GOP officials who also attended.

And yeah: we've used the straw poll question option available to all parties in their primaries to survey our county Democratic base electorate on a plethora of issues. Gun control? Maybe 70% support. Marijuana legalization? 70%. Gay marriage? 70-75%. Ending immigration profiling and the like? 65%. With Medicaid, though, it's a strong 90% - and very relevant here.

And I was just about to post the link to the town hall video for anybody who wanted to watch!

[Adam Griffin]

I just watched the video of the event her campaign posted (because I'm weird and can't get enough of her). I absolutely LOVED her response to the lady's question about Stone Mountain. She explains the historical context of Confederate monuments and refuses to backtrack or back down (and then redirected focus back to REAL issues). I know Kemp is going to bring it up at a debate and she is going to eviscerate him.

I loved how she got the loudest applause when she mentioned expanding Medicaid. When I canvass for her that's what gets the most passionate response.

Could I have the timestamp for that?

42:30ish

[Adam Griffin]

I mailed my ABM application on Tuesday; I'm trying ABM this year - for the second time. The first time was in our special state Senate election last year...in which I never received my ballot and had to vote on Election Day. They claimed they never received it (in that election, we got over 100 people to vote by mail and it was a record for the county + we won among those ballots, but alas, mine never showed).

I'm pushing ABM to everybody but my personal experience does have me a bit apprehensive at how accurate the county BoE is at getting ballots delivered. It's a good way to especially get older votes cast; we still have a lot of 80+ year-olds here who are Democratic but who can't vote due to medical issues and so forth.

[Adam Griffin]

They must be seeing it having an effect. I can tell you that in my part of the state, the #1 anti-Abrams talking point I'm hearing is about that (well, other than "guns!" and "Stone Mountain", but even then, it's probably still outpacing those, too).

[Adam Griffin]

They must be seeing it having an effect. I can tell you that in my part of the state, the #1 anti-Abrams talking point I'm hearing is about that (well, other than "guns!" and "Stone Mountain", but even then, it's probably still outpacing those, too).

It never really affected Rubio... I wonder why it is having more of an effect with Abrams.

It may not be as big of an issue in suburban areas as it is elsewhere. Rubio's GA support was heavily concentrated in the suburbs, but besides being a general election, I imagine suburban GA has a better understanding (if not downright sympathy) with the notion of debt being complex and taxes being complicated. On the surface, this strikes me as an issue that would only create headwinds with the poorly-educated (or just poor, who would never find themselves in a situation where they owed $50k to anybody). Though if ads are being ran in the ATL market (I wouldn't know: I'm in Chatt market and we get ignored always because of that), then it must be impacting something.

[Adam Griffin]

The coordinated campaign is placing field organizers in Rome and Dalton. Neither have had staffers deployed to my knowledge since 2008, and even then, they were volunteers as best as I can recall.

[Adam Griffin]

The coordinated campaign is placing field organizers in Rome and Dalton. Neither have had staffers deployed to my knowledge since 2008, and even then, they were volunteers as best as I can recall.

The fact that she's even making any sort of effort toward Northern Georgia at all proves to me that she's a dynamic candidate.  Most Dems would write that area off.

TBH though this kind of activity is a classic double standard. Right now we are exalting her for reaching out to areas that are typically off the map, but if she loses we will be blaming her for sending resources to areas she shouldn't have. It is not that it doesn't deserve attention, it is just that we the observers will overplay its significance - in either direction.

I don't think anybody who knows the entirety of Georgia and its demographics would make such a diagnosis after the fact (though, to be fair, there are plenty in the party who think that way). It is North Georgia and North Georgia alone that has been denying Democrats victory over the past 10 years, and abandoning the region has only ceded ground to the GOP and atrophied Democratic infrastructure. We've lost a vote statewide for every one we've gained since 2008 and much of it comes from North Georgia. I'd argue that for any persuasion-based outreach, North Georgia is the most opportune area for GA Democrats to learn how to master the strategy in rural areas again, but given its low turnout and huge drop-offs in midterms (particularly in the NW), turnout strategies can produce results as well.

Democrats need to close the margin by like 275k votes to win a majority and you're only realistically going to get half of that out of Metro ATL; maybe another 20% of that out of the remaining urban areas if you're lucky. That leaves another 100k votes or so that have to come from rural Georgia, and South Georgia doesn't have anywhere near enough population to pull those kinds of figures.

Georgia is not Illinois. You cannot win a majority statewide by assuming the major metro can carry the state across the line kicking and screaming (yet). A Democratic candidate who doesn't seriously contest every region of the state is not a serious candidate, and isn't going to win because the votes just aren't there otherwise. We've been in a situation for awhile now where if we could just pull the numbers among whites or rural voters that we had 4-6 years prior, we'd be on the verge of winning pluralities at minimum, but abandoning the areas where those losses are occurring only ensures one set of demographics is cancelled out by the other.

[Adam Griffin]

And I'd point out that I've just given up on prognosticating that "we've reached the bottom". I thought we were there in 2008 (and again in 2012), but then 2016 showed me that Democrats in GA could fall a lot farther than I'd ever imagined possible. I also imagine Abrams is also going to lose ground with the usual likely rural white voters compared to Carter (who really didn't do that badly in rural areas; better than Obama '12 and in some cases Obama '08), so organizing in these areas is necessary both to back-fill additional losses, turn out irregular voters and improve margins.

[Adam Griffin]

Completely meaningless stat for those who like number patterns: when I opened the page for this board just now, this thread had 2679 replies and 206079 views.  (And isn't it past time for a new thread?)

And let Washington continue to out-megathread us? Never!

Though I wouldn't be against merging this thread with a new one if the first post in the thread was the OP for the new thread; would give the option to edit thread title with new news and so forth. BK has left the forum as far as I know.

[Adam Griffin]

Completely meaningless stat for those who like number patterns: when I opened the page for this board just now, this thread had 2679 replies and 206079 views.  (And isn't it past time for a new thread?)

And let Washington continue to out-megathread us? Never!

Though I wouldn't be against merging this thread with a new one if the first post in the thread was the OP for the new thread; would give the option to edit thread title with new news and so forth. BK has left the forum as far as I know.

griff you should do the honors

So they'll merge like that properly? If so, here we go!