Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[DINGO Joe]

DEM PPP: 925,180 (50.77%)
GOP PPP: 897,146 (49.23%)
TOTAL: 1,822,326

DEM SEN: 1,010,150 (51.93%)
GOP SEN: 935,017 (48.07%)
TOTAL: 1,945,167

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k: now at 122,841. Maybe a bunch of people did skip the presidential contest, but a 6% undervote seems way too high. There still surely has to be tens of thousands of PPP-only mail ballots to be counted.

I thought the SOS site says none of the PPP-only vote has been added.  It's been counted, but not added.

[DINGO Joe]

I see that the front runner in the GA-14 R primary is an open QAnon supporter.  It's a 75% Trump district so the winner of the runoff will go to Congress.

here's the WaPo article btw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-republican-and-qanon-believer-favored-to-win-us-house-seat/2020/06/11/f52bc004-ac13-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 925,180 (50.77%)
GOP PPP: 897,146 (49.23%)
TOTAL: 1,822,326

DEM SEN: 1,010,150 (51.93%)
GOP SEN: 935,017 (48.07%)
TOTAL: 1,945,167

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k: now at 122,841. Maybe a bunch of people did skip the presidential contest, but a 6% undervote seems way too high. There still surely has to be tens of thousands of PPP-only mail ballots to be counted.

I thought the SOS site says none of the PPP-only vote has been added.  It's been counted, but not added.

Good to know! I guess they added that disclaimer yesterday. Of course when I looked a few minutes ago, I only read the first sentence!

[Adam Griffin]

I see that the front runner in the GA-14 R primary is an open QAnon supporter.  It's a 75% Trump district so the winner of the runoff will go to Congress.

here's the WaPo article btw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-republican-and-qanon-believer-favored-to-win-us-house-seat/2020/06/11/f52bc004-ac13-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

This is my district. Don't make me get started on this. Her dumb Cobb County ass (who doesn't even live in the district; maybe she moved after announcing her campaign, I don't know) is going to lead to the NW Georgia district getting sliced into pieces in 2021 if nominated in the runoff. While there's no way a Democratic member of the US House wins an election with NW Georgia in it, I do at least appreciate all of the effort that NW GA GOP officials put into ensuring that the new 14th district (at the time) was a geographically compact, mostly (ugh Paulding) culturally-relevant district drawn here in 2011. I could be wrong, but I imagine if this cretin wins, the GAGOP at-large will split this area three ways to Sunday in redistricting to flush that turd down the electoral drain (as multi-millonaire Frank Reynolds once said).

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

I see that the front runner in the GA-14 R primary is an open QAnon supporter.  It's a 75% Trump district so the winner of the runoff will go to Congress.

here's the WaPo article btw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-republican-and-qanon-believer-favored-to-win-us-house-seat/2020/06/11/f52bc004-ac13-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

This is my district. Don't make me get started on this. Her dumb Cobb County ass (who doesn't even live in the district; maybe she moved after announcing her campaign, I don't know) is going to lead to the NW Georgia district getting sliced into pieces in 2021 if nominated in the runoff. While there's no way a Democratic member of the US House wins an election with NW Georgia in it, I do at least appreciate all of the effort that NW GA GOP officials put into ensuring that the new 14th district (at the time) was a geographically compact, mostly (ugh Paulding) culturally-relevant district drawn here in 2011. I could be wrong, but I imagine if this cretin wins, the GAGOP at-large will split this area three ways to Sunday in redistricting to flush that turd down the electoral drain (as multi-millonaire Frank Reynolds once said).

Why is there any reason to believe that they are interested in primarying our conspiracy theorists? Republicans haven’t cared about their politicians openly peddling conspiracies in the Trump era at all. In fact, they are often rewarded by the voters for doing so (Trump)

[Rookie Yinzer]

skbl17 and Grif, how would you rate Senate District 17's race? Kelly Rose is shaping up to be a formidable candidate but Brian Strickland is Kemp/GOP's golden boy and clearly being groomed for bigger things down the line. They're going to go all out to protect him.

I'm leaving Covington (Newton County) and probably moving to McDonough, so will probably be voting in this race.

[Adam Griffin]

skbl17 and Grif, how would you rate Senate District 17's race? Kelly Rose is shaping up to be a formidable candidate but Brian Strickland is Kemp/GOP's golden boy and clearly being groomed for bigger things down the line. They're going to go all out to protect him.

I'm leaving Covington (Newton County) and probably moving to McDonough, so will probably be voting in this race.

Maybe Tilt R? I'm reluctant to say it's a toss-up, even if the trajectory of the area suggests it very well could be. Trump won it by 15.7 in '16, while Kemp won it by 6.5 in '18. However, Strickland probably will continue to overperform the top of the ticket by a couple of points in addition.

So it was basically 10 points to the right of the state in '16 and 5 points to the right of it in '18. That's some major movement; obviously if the trends held, Democrats would be favored (or at minimum, the district would vote in line with the state - before factoring in any Strickland/incumbent advantage).

The real question in districts like these is one I've had since 2018: how much of Abrams' improvement was her basically pulling an Obama and cashing in demographic shifts earlier than expected (i.e. where Obama lost by 5 in '08 and it took eight years for another Democrat to replicate that margin), and how much is consistent demographic shift that will continue? Obviously SD-17 is close to ground zero for black suburban growth in the area over the past decade, but I don't know enough about the area's population shifts over the past 3-4 years at a granular level to say with absolute certainty.

[Adam Griffin]

Worth noting that Democrats currently lead Republicans 54-46 in the primary in SD-17 (measured by State Senate primary totals rather than PPP/SEN - might be wider by those metrics). Of course, this district is contained within 3 (more or less) reliable Democratic counties now and will naturally begin attracting a greater share of GOP voters pulling DEM primary ballots than the other way around. This has probably already happened in Rockdale, but is just starting to ramp up in Henry and Newton.

Because of this and perhaps due to other factors, I'm hesitant to assume that the large shifts in D/R ballot shares in the primary throughout suburban ATL are actually indicative of impending GE performance anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio. It's hard for me to believe that Democrats will be getting in the mid-to-high 60s in places like Gwinnett, Douglas and Henry come November, so I think some of this is indicative of variations in turnout competitiveness (Trump and Perdue were uncontested, Democrats had competitive races for both contests if but in name only) and indicative of a general realignment of the area's primary voting behaviors as counties flip from R to D.

Despite this, it's still a good sign. Obviously the district should be treated as a toss-up in every metric from a Democratic organizational standpoint (manpower, money; regardless of chances).

[skbl17]

I actually don't live in SD-17 anymore lol, but HD-35 (Ed "Heartbeat Bill" Setzler) and SD-37 (Lindsey Tippins).

Anyway, while it's true that SD-17 contains parts of two reliable-Dem counties (Rockdale and Henry), I wouldn't call Newton "reliably Dem", at least not to the same extent as Henry. Newton County has barely budged in the last few years; the sheer size of the AfAm population means that Newton tips Dem in a normal year, but in low-turnout races, the GOP can and does still win it. Stacey Abrams actually did slightly better in Cobb County than she did in Newton.

Also, the parts of the Henry and Newton counties that overlap with SD-17 are the reddest parts of their respective counties. The heavily-black portions of Newton and Rockdale are in SD-43, for example; most of the Newton precincts inside SD-17 were Kemp+30 or better in 2018, while Henry's SD-17 precincts were more split but still Republican-leaning thanks to the inclusion of virtually every Republican precinct east of SR 155.

What that means for the fall, I dunno. With the competitive HD-109 being almost completely contained inside SD-17, I'd imagine the Dems will ensure there's a lot of campaigning going for both Regina Lewis-Ward (HD-109) and Kelly Rose. I'd probably classify SD-17 as Lean R due to the nine-point gap the Dems have to make up, but I can see the argument for tilt R.

Meanwhile, I can see the argument for HD-109 being Tilt D (although I'd keep it as a tossup out of a sense of caution). The portions of that district that are in Rockdale and Newton are Dem as of 2018, and everything west of SR 155 in Henry County is either blue or swinging blue. Even the east-of-155 precincts are moving in a more pink direction; don't get me wrong, they're still Republican, but not Trump+40 Republican. Rutledge was reelected in 2018 by an 828-vote margin: that will not be difficult for Dems to overcome so long as they remember to turn out.

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

I think the sheer margin Dems are out voting Republicans in the primary isn’t getting the proper attention it deserves. Democrats are now leading by over 6% in the Senate results, or over 125k. All the more notable because the Democratic base generally are much lower propensity turnout demographics compared to the GOP’s, especially in Georgia

[Rookie Yinzer]

I think the sheer margin Dems are out voting Republicans in the primary isn’t getting the proper attention it deserves. Democrats are now leading by over 6% in the Senate results, or over 125k. All the more notable because the Democratic base generally are much lower propensity turnout demographics compared to the GOP’s, especially in Georgia

A lot of folks won't take it seriously until November 4 and then claim they knew all along. I can't wait.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

How many pickups will Democrats have in the GA legislature this year?

[Oryxslayer]

How many pickups will Democrats have in the GA legislature this year?

Unfortunately, not enough, and that's probably all that will matter.

[skbl17]

How many pickups will Democrats have in the GA legislature this year?

In short:

Unfortunately, not enough, and that's probably all that will matter.

In the 180-seat state House, you need 91 seats for a majority. Dems hold 75, so they need a net gain of 16.

In the 56-seat state Senate, you need 28 seats + the lieutenant governor for a majority (29 without him). Dems hold 21, so they need a net gain of 7 and hope to beat Geoff Duncan in 2022, or win 8 if they don't want to worry about that.

Even if the Dems hold all their seats in the state House, they would need to run the table on all of the seats the AJC marked as being won by Republicans in 2018 with 55% or less of the vote, plus gain HD-106 in Snellville, which returned Brett Harrell unopposed but voted for Abrams by double-digits upballot. That would get them to 91, but it would require the Dems to play everything 100% perfectly, and even then that might not be quite enough.

For example, some of the seats the Dems would need to win are in rural Georgia, in areas that are shifting away from them. Some of the metro Atlanta suburban seats may shift left but stay narrowly Republican, such as HD-44 or HD-49. Deborah Silcox and Sharon Cooper may have just enough moderate street cred left to survive in their top-end Perimeter seats. Add in HD-151's Gerald Greene (R) being quite popular with the voters of his rural Obama/Clinton district, and I can't get the Dems to 91.

I can get them to the low 80s, but it's a stretch for me to see the Dems winning more than 82 or 83 seats. Very, very Likely R, but for all intents and purposes it's practically Safe R.

The state Senate is absolutely Safe R without question. The Dems could get a few seats (SD-9, SD-17, SD-56), but they'd still be four or five seats short of a majority. To win control, they'd need to win seats that are R+20 or better. Not happening.

[YE]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

[skbl17]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 997,409 (52.00%)
GOP PPP: 920,608 (48.00%)
TOTAL: 1,918,017

DEM SEN: 1,088,763 (53.14%)
GOP SEN: 959,930 (46.86%)
TOTAL: 2,048,693

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 8k since yesterday: now at 130,676.


Somewhat related, this means that the SD 17 primary composition is now only about 1.2 points to the left of the statewide SEN primary composition (no new votes from SD 17 since yesterday).

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

How many state house districts did Stacey Abrams win? And what is the tipping point district based on Abrams's performance?

[Adam Griffin]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

How many state house districts did Stacey Abrams win? And what is the tipping point district based on Abrams's performance?

78:

I think based on 2018 HD results alone, the tipping point district was one of the ones in Houston County. Not sure about which one based on Abrams' margins, though.

[YE]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

If 2018 was R+8.7, in theory the needed 10 point uniform swing would be D+1.3, which is a doable presidential margin but giving how right the state voted downballot, that seems only doable in theory. Also isn’t that gap from the high profile races versus state legislature races more ancestrally Republican than other fast trending D metros?

[skbl17]

After reading Speaker YE's post, I decided to look into how the primary numbers in state House races looked.

As of 1am the partisan primary split in the state House primaries is 92-88 GOP. The statewide vote breakdown is really close:

- 869,858 D (50.5%)
- 852,917 R (49.5%)

When this megathread was first started, I made a post indicating the kinds of districts Dems would need to win for control of the state House. Here's the current partisan primary breakdown in each of those districts:

Seats I said the Dems must hold:

HD-132	4,955 D (51.8%) - 4,614 R (48.2%)	D+3.6%	Minority leader Bob Trammell's seat
HD-37	6,136 D (54.8%) - 5,066 R (45.2%)	D+9.6%
HD-48	5,164 D (59.8%) - 3,471 R (40.2%)	D+19.6%
HD-50	5,310 D (63.4%) - 3,062 R (36.6%)	D+26.8%
HD-108	6,095 D (58.2%) - 4,375 R (41.8%)	D+16.4%

So for now, it appears that the metro seats are in good shape. Bob Trammell looks like he'll survive his primary, but the primary numbers still leave room for concern.

How about Brett Harrell (R) in HD-106?:

HD-106

8,415 D (64.2%) - 4,698 R (35.8%)

D+28.4%

Yeah, he's done for in November; as I said, he only got lucky in 2018 as the Dems' own qualifying hijinks cost them a place on the ballot in this double-digit Abrams seat in south Gwinnett. Oddly enough, the write-in candidate from 2018, Emily Leslie, is losing badly in the Dem primary.

Meanwhile, the Dems have to run the table on these GOP-held seats:

HD-35	6,464 D (56.8%) - 4,920 R (43.2%)	D+13.6%
HD-43	6,216 D (51.0%) - 5,963 R (49.0%)	D+2.0%
HD-44	6,199 D (49.6%) - 6,297 R (50.4%)	R+0.8%
HD-49	5,716 D (57.3%) - 4,264 R (42.7%)	D+14.6%
HD-52	6,720 D (63.7%) - 3,823 R (36.3%)	D+27.4%
HD-97	6,270 D (53.0%) - 5,571 R (47.0%)	D+6.0%
HD-104	7,091 D (57.8%) - 5,180 R (42.2%)	D+15.6%
HD-109	8,538 D (58.3%) - 6,108 R (41.7%)	D+16.6%
HD-117	6,483 D (50.4%) - 6,376 R (49.6%)	D+0.8%
HD-119	6,305 D (45.5%) - 7,566 R (54.5%)	R+9.0%
HD-147	4,108 D (48.6%) - 4,342 R (51.4%)	R+2.8%
HD-151	7,054 D (66.1%) - 3,626 R (33.9%)	D+32.2%
HD-164	3,850 D (55.0%) - 3,148 R (45.0%)	D+10.0%
HD-138	4,276 D (49.3%) - 4,391 R (50.7%)	R+1.4%
HD-179	4,507 D (42.3%) - 6,140 R (57.7%)	R+15.4%

Assuming the Dems hold all of their seats, winning all of these seats would get them to 91 seats - a slim majority. Most of these seats are in metro Atlanta, but several are not: HD-117 and HD-119 are in Athens, HD-138 is in west Georgia, HD-147 is in Warner Robins, HD-151 is in southwest Georgia, HD-164 is in Savannah, and HD-179 is in Brunswick.

Now, you may think, "hold on skbl17, if you add up all the seats here that Dems are leading in, they only get to 86 seats!" To be fair, that's still a bit above where I have them getting to in November anyway, and also, it turns out that there are two other seats that weren't on my radar because I didn't think of them as competitive:

HD-47	5,126 D (50.3%) - 5,072 R (49.7%)	D+0.6%	Speaker pro tempore of the House Jan Jones's seat
HD-110	5,591 D (49.1%) - 5,804 R (50.9%)	R+1.8%

That gets the Dems to 87 seats. Finally, there was another seat I missed in my original June post: HD-145. It's currently held by a Republican, but this Milledgeville-to-Eatonton seat is still reasonably competitive, as Baldwin County is a swingy-but-Dem-tipping-in-good-Dem-years county, and this seat contains all of Baldwin plus a bit of Putnam (up to Eatonton). The primary results reflect the competitive nature:

HD-145

5,280 D (51.6%) - 4,963 R (48.4%)

D+3.2%

Now, winning every seat listed here would get the Dems to 94 seats, three more than they need for a majority. I do think some of these seats are still quite a reach for Dems though. HD-179, for instance, is only on the very fringes of competitive (and will in all likelihood be off the board for Dems come November,) and I still have serious doubts over seats like HD-117, HD-119, and HD-151. Also, some of the seats where Dems have very slim leads (like 1 or 2 points) are probably close enough that it could be chalked up to the competitive nature of the top-of-the-ballot races versus the coronations on the GOP side, combined with Georgia's open primary system. However, one thing I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be many results that would be owed to rural ancestral Dems (aside from, perhaps, the aforementioned HD-151) - seats like HD-138 are narrowly R, but you'd think that it would be D due to, say, local county-level races. Who knows.

That said, the door to House control is cracked ever so slightly; the question is whether or not the Dems will go all-in and make a play for it. I still say the state House is Very Likely R, but I'll back off from the move I made earlier to Safe R. You could even make a fair argument that the state House may be a strong Likely-but-on-the-cusp-of-Lean R if you were feeling particularly bold.

[DINGO Joe]

I assume the fact that Ga has an ungodly number of house seats and counties are somehow related.  Also, why is HD-179 on the list?

[skbl17]

I assume the fact that Ga has an ungodly number of house seats and counties are somehow related.  Also, why is HD-179 on the list?

On the subject of counties, I don't think the numbers are related. The common refrain in Georgia is that we have the number of counties we have because the idea was for farmers and those doing business in the county seat to be able to travel there and back within one day by horse and buggy.

I'm actually not sure about why we have 180 House seats tbh.

As for HD-179, back in June when I made my original list, I noticed that the HD-179 result in 2018 seemed closer than I would have expected. HD-179 is anchored in the city of Brunswick, so at the time I thought that in the right conditions, and with the right candidate, it could poke its nose into the competitive board. I was probably jumping the gun, even though it does seem as if Dem prospects in coastal Georgia are slowly improving.

Honestly, I would have swapped 179 for 145. Can't believe I forgot about that seat!

[Adam Griffin]

I assume the fact that Ga has an ungodly number of house seats and counties are somehow related.

Note: my memory may not be serving me on every detail here, so catch a grain or two of salt.

From the late 1800s until the 60s, Georgia had what's known as the County Unit System. Because rural counties received a new State House member each time a new county was created under the system, legislators began creating a slew of counties prior to the Great Depression to ensure rural interests remained represented in Atlanta and that urban, Republican and black voters could not take over (I want to say something like 30-35 new counties were created from the 1890s-1920s).

The County Unit System at its end had 121 "rural" counties, 30 "town" counties and 8 "urban" counties. Rural counties each had 2 votes/units, town counties 4 votes/units and urban counties 8 votes/units (i.e. statewide votes in primaries and the like were weighed in such a way that a handful of counties with a few thousand people could offset a county with tens or even hundreds of thousands). Each county had a minimum of 1 State House rep, which was only tangentially related to the broader CUS, but it's still a variable. Technically the system didn't exist for statewide general elections (only for primaries), but given the Democratic primary was the de-facto GE...

When the system was abolished in the 60s, the number of State House members was never scaled back. It was later constitutionally capped at 180.

[Adam Griffin]

Here's the current Senate primary turnout by county (map + spreadsheet):

2020 Senate Primary Turnout by County