Georgia senate seats runoff(s) megathread

[MT Treasurer]

Occam's razor: Split-ticket voting in a state with very few genuinely persuadable voters will be absolutely minimal after two months in which voters are reminded that both races will end up deciding control of the Senate, and Perdue's ‘superior candidate quality’/Loeffler's ‘inferior candidate quality’ will have a negligible to non-existent impact on the outcome. Unless either race is decided by <.4 points or something like that, there’s little to no chance of a split decision.

Once again:

Turnout patterns + composition of the electorate >>> ‘candidate quality’

[MT Treasurer]

Gonna be honest. Don't care.

I don’t think you or any other red avatar on this forum is the intended target audience here.

[MT Treasurer]

(1) Not every anti-Trump voter is a liberal who wants Biden to have a trifecta, and (2) a competent Republican presidential candidate almost certainly would have won this election, which would have made the down-ballot results for Democrats seem like far less of an underperformance than they actually were (it was Trump who underperformed the fundamentals in 2016, it was Trump who threw away a winnable election in 2020). It’s not that difficult to understand?

This will probably be relatively close in the end and come down to turnout patterns more than actual persuasion, but it’s not that hard to envision a Biden/Perdue or even Biden/Loeffler voter in this race -- certainly far easier than a Trump/Ossoff or Trump/Warnock voter. Republicans' biggest fear should be Trump voters in rural/small-town GA staying home, although I’m still expecting enough of them to turn out for Perdue/Loeffler to allow them to win by 3-4 points in January.

[MT Treasurer]

I hate saying this even if it’s been more common since the polling debacle this year, but I’m not sure I’ll let any poll of this race (especially one showing a wide gap between the two races) factor into my prediction, especially given the remaining uncertainty with regard to the turnout patterns of various demographic groups/voter blocs within the parties.

[MT Treasurer]

This is still an election Republicans should be and almost certainly still are slight but solid favorites to win (obviously not by a large margin, but by 2-4 points or so), but the way I see it, there are three obvious land mines for the GOP here which can quickly cause them to blow two very winnable races:

1) oversaturation/diminishing returns similar to SC/ME/MT for Senate Democrats this year. Outspending the other party doesn’t do as much good as it used to (if it ever really meant that much, honestly), and while a barrage of ads may help, it will replace neither a consistent and condensed message nor a solid GOTV operation (which exists on the D side to a far greater extent than in 2008). There’s also a case to be made that excessive saturation of the airwaves/on social media/local outlets can backfire — I do think this is a very underrated reason behind Bullock's and Gideon's surprisingly decisive losses.

2) lose sight/focus of your main message — nationalize, nationalize, nationalize. This matters far more than the candidate quality of any of the four candidates involved. I’ve seen some of the attack ads on Ossoff and Warnock and some of them strike me as over the top and/or attacks which cannot easily be made to fit into the main theme of nationalizing the race (‘Warnock is an anti-semite’ isn’t going to bring voters to the polls the same way ‘Warnock is a rubber stamp for Schumer who will support court packing/defunding the police on day one’ will). Not sure if anyone saw Rick Scott's ad, but that was certainly more to the point than some of the attacks on Warnock's character.

3) not doing enough to get low-propensity Trump voters to the polls — this has become an exaggerated talking point/meme but there’s some truth to it, and Scott even admitted this. You can get a lot of loyal Trump supporters/Republicans to turn out for the runoff by relentlessly emphasizing that Senate control is at stake but you can get even more of them to the polls by promoting a ‘vote against the party that obstructed Trump's entire presidency/stick it to the party which defeated Trump’ narrative. Fear is always a good motivator, a combination of fear and anger is an even better motivator.

And, of course, the ultimate pitfall:

(4) not making use of UTSD on the campaign trail

[MT Treasurer]

It’s beyond obvious that the long-term prospects for Republicans are singularly bleak in GA (arguably more so than in any other state), which is why I don’t see Perdue/Loeffler winning by more than 4 points or so, but extrapolating GA trends or even a single voter file into a narrative about an emerging Democratic national majority which also includes unusual strength in midterm elections is pointless.

[MT Treasurer]

Regular is Likely R; Special is Lean R. Biden only won Georgia because of Trump's collapse in the suburbs; these people are not giving Democrats a trifecta even though the filibuster is here to stay. Only hope for Democrats is if Republicans think the election will be rigged and don't show up.

If there were that many of those people, GA-R wouldn’t have gone to a runoff. I do think the people you’re describing exist in non-insignificant numbers (enough for Perdue/Loeffler to win narrowly), but make no mistake: the writing is on the wall in this state, and the last thing Republicans should be doing right now is getting too cocky because of some belief that runoffs inherently favor Rs in the state/GA will ‘snap back’/etc.

Also, most of the D gains in places like Gwinnett aren’t a result of ancestral Republicans switching parties but rather demographic shifts/D-friendly migration patterns/generational turnover.

[MT Treasurer]

"bipartisan"

Trying to flip the senate

Lmao media 10/10.

They’ll stop when Daines unveils his new bipartisan bill

https://riponadvance.com/stories/daines-prepares-bipartisan-bill-to-provide-pandemic-relief-to-small-businesses-local-lenders/

[MT Treasurer]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/gov-hogan-vote-loeffler-perdue-to-uphold-moderation-and-compromise-in-the-us-senate

Hogan endorses Loeffler and Perdue and loses much of my respect

And yet hundreds of thousands of Democrats voted for this guy when almost no Republicans will vote for any Democrat.

Yes, because Clinton +42 and Clinton +20 states would totally send Republicans to the United States Senate and Laura Kelly, Andy Beshear, John Bel Edwards, Jared Golden, Sherrod Brown, etc. all don’t exist.

This talking point is pretty disingenuous.

[MT Treasurer]

Ironically, Jon Ossoff may have been the one who saved Kelly Loeffler this year by holding Perdue below the 50% threshold (a runoff which determines Senate control is pretty much the only runoff Loeffler could win in today's GA). I think Doug Collins would have been stronger than Loeffler in the runoff, but given the immensely nationalized nature of both races, I doubt that the ‘candidate quality’ of any of the four candidates will have a major impact on the final outcome.

Loeffler will be in big trouble in 2022 even if it’s a ‘Biden midterm,’ and I’m really not sure she could carve out a particularly appealing brand for herself like Isakson did even if she tried.

[MT Treasurer]

My early guess would be:

55-45 Perdue/Ossoff
54-46 Löffler/Warnock

Wrong thread:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=89156.0

[MT Treasurer]

apparently 7% of voters who are voting in the runoffs did not vote in the general, I wonder who they are? its weird

My take is that it's voters who now realize that their vote actually matters, but idk if this group is primarily red or blue.

Republican turnout in the general was nearly 90%, so I'd be astonished if they're managing to turn out voters who didn't vote in the general at this point.

Inshallah. I also know that voter registration groups (at least the ones I've worked with) have been mega focused on voters who turn 18 between the election and the runoff, so that's probably at least a significant part of that group, and I have to imagine that those voters are overwhelmingly Democratic.

They are Ossoff Loeffler voters.
They love Ossoff because he is a cute young millennial, but they also are voting Loeffler because they want one male and female for equality.

I don’t think that’s the reason they’re voting against Warnock....

[MT Treasurer]

Steve Daines? Tilt R -> Safe R (unless Tester campaigns for Ds in GA, in which case the state implodes)

[MT Treasurer]

Seriously though, what’s the Republican ‘ground game’ like here right now? I think they have the right message (at least when they don’t get distracted from relentlessly nationalizing the race) but their turnout operation worries me far more than their messaging (Democrats are good at getting their base out; even in 2018 they only lost the runoffs by 4 when they didn’t even flip Cobb and only narrowly won Gwinnett).

[MT Treasurer]

Republicans here are definitely really motivated, and I think the GOP honestly has a pretty good ground game from what I've seen, though the same obviously goes for the Democrats. I get the sense that it's going to be extremely close.

Thanks. I think both races will play out a lot like the GA-SoS 2018 runoff but with Ossoff/Warnock getting Barrow’s November numbers out of Atlanta (esp. suburban/exurban Atlanta, where the drop-off in D %-tage/turnout in the runoff was most severe) but Perdue/Loeffler getting somewhere between Trump 2020 and Kemp 2018 numbers out of rural/small-town GA. In other words: Definitely very close, but very, very slight (albeit tenuous) advantage to the Republicans.

[MT Treasurer]

Gotta love seeing "bipartisan" Steve Daines running around with Louie Gohmert, Sarah Palin, MJT and Jim Jordan a few weeks after his election.

Uh... Senator Daines didn't lie about being bipartisan. Montanans know he's bipartisan. Literally every Montanan knows about Senator Daines' bipartisan bill promoting veteran outdoor recovery programs that was recently signed into law

Last week, Senator Daines' new bipartisan commonsense Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020, which will increase cybersecurity standards for internet connected devices, was signed into law. If his wasn’t for Senator Daines championing coordinated vulnerability disclosure policies with the attendant emotional benefits of sharing selfies without hesitation or reservation, he likely would not have won the 18-to-29 Millennial/Generation Z age cohort, a large part of which is comprised of college-educated, libertarian, post-modernist but socially responsible swing voters in pivot counties like Gallatin (MSU, Bozeman main campus) and 67% of which supported Jon Tester in 2018, by 28 points (64-36) this year, which would have resulted in a far more competitive Senate race. Senator Daines KNOWS his state, which is why I opine that he’ll be extremely difficult to dislodge in 2026 (although it’s possible, if not likely, that I’m underrating him).

[MT Treasurer]

I know this is an unpopular take, but if Warnock and Ossoff win in January, NH/AZ/NV (and maybe even one solid blue state like IL/OR/MD/VT) all flip before GA in 2022. While it’s true that technically this isn’t a ‘Biden midterm’ yet, there’s not much reason to treat a high-turnout election which will decide Senate control in what we know will be a Biden administration as less indicative of the state's political future (both in 2022 and beyond) than a 2022 Senate race.

[MT Treasurer]

Atlas: “Turnout’s going to be low because a Dixiecrat who ran away from the shadow of Obama lost a low turnout election over a decade ago before millions of new voters joined the voter rolls.”

Atlas: “I live in a white state but dammit I know how the blacks are gonna vote and the turnout is just not going to be there in a runoff. Nevermind that the state has been at the epicenter of the voting rights conversation in this country and over a billion dollars will be spent. Jim Martin’s loss accurately predicts voting patterns, twelve years, and 3 million new registrants later.”

^You must be posting on a different ‘Atlas’ than I am because all I’m seeing (aside from two perpetual red-avatar doomers) is reports of high D/turnout Black turnout, rumors/tweets about ‘low-propensity Trumpists’ sitting this one out, Loeffler and Perdue making supposedly game-changing gaffes, etc.

[MT Treasurer]

I admit that weeks ago I thought that GOP had this in the bag  simply because I believed that the Dems would sit this one out like they always do in runoff elections  but Now its becoming very clear that will not be the case this time and Dems seem to be more energized than normal

maybe the GOP can still win it in the end but at this point It would not shock or surprise me at all if they Dems ended winning both seats on election day

Yeah, which is why Mary Landrieu won 44% of the vote in 2014 and why Democrats lost the two GA runoffs in 2018 by less than 4 points. The ‘Dems always sit out runoffs’ myth is based almost entirely on a single runoff election held twelve years ago (which, as RFKFan has already pointed out, is an extremely flawed comparison). At no point in this runoff campaign was there ever any good reason to believe that Republicans had either race in the bag, and Ossoff/Warnock wins would by no means qualify as ‘upsets.’ I’m still expecting Perdue and Loeffler to win, but certainly not by more than 3-4 points.

[MT Treasurer]

I personally think that Warnock could be accused of things far worse than that and it wouldn’t change people's minds. This race isn’t about Warnock's background/strengths as a candidate but about him being vote 50 for Senate Democrats, and in my view no story will change that in a state with as small a segment of genuinely persuadable voters as GA. Don’t think this is comparable to the Cunningham revelations.

[MT Treasurer]

Also, if both seats flip, it kind of destroys the "structural likely R senate" meme.  Biden won 25 states.  If Senate Dems can defeat GOP incumbents in Biden's narrowest state, they are in much better shape than anyone thought after 2018.

Said Biden state not only has an incredibly small segment of actually persuadable voters but also happens to be the most rapidly D-trending state of any remotely competitive state (i.e. not CO/VA) in the entire country. If Democrats win these races, it will tell us more about GA's political future and further underscore the fact that GA is rapidly turning/has already turned into a reliably Democratic state than it will about Democrats' prospects in the Senate after 2021 (I could certainly see Democrats losing all of NH/NV/AZ/WV/OH/MT in 2022/2024, all of which might be more competitive than GA at this point, which would still make the Senate somewhat uphill for them in the long run, for instance).

The only reason the GA runoffs even matter is because Republicans were too incompetent to win a Senate race in a Trump +42 state (in addition to losing other winnable races such as MT 2018, MI 2020, etc.). Democrats still have to overcome some serious structural challenges in the Senate.

[MT Treasurer]

I agree the bolded states are sure losses, and the other 3 are not sure wins.  However, bouncing back in New England and to a lesser extent Michigan + alleviating CA/NY vote sink concerns in the medium/long run + Alaska and Kansas/Nebraska looking attractive by the middle/end of the decade + Florida potentially becoming a big state GOP vote sink by then are why things look more even now than in 2017 or 2019.  They will be in a hole come 2025, but it would be a lot more manageable with this coalition than the 75% Dem CA, 55% Dem TX, and 55% GOP Midwest/New England world it looked like we were careening toward in 2016/18. 

MT is definitely not a sure loss, and I wouldn’t completely write off Brown either although he’s almost certainly the underdog. I also don’t see NH/ME/MI/KS/NE being nearly as promising for Democrats as long as they actually control the White House (which they probably will until 2028 at the very least), although I agree on AK. The GA seats are probably gone for the GOP before the end of the decade regardless of which party occupies the White House.

Even with GA firmly in the D column, there are still a lot of potentially vulnerable Senate seats Democrats currently hold in competitive/-ish states (Tester, Manchin, Brown, Stabenow, Peters, Baldwin, Sinema, Kelly, Rosen, Cortez Masto, Hassan, Shaheen, King, arguably one or two of the NM/MN seats as well but that’s stretching it), so some combination of one or two Republican-friendly midterms in 2022/2026 + a rapid decline in split-ticket voting and/or a national GOP victory in 2024 could wipe most of them out. GA is definitely not going to be part of the GOP's path of least resistance after 2021.

[MT Treasurer]

Bitecoffer said today she has never analyzed a race before where the ev was so good for one party and  that party ended up losing

In fact, I would argue the ev for dems in these Georgia races is better than any ev data in any election since 2014

literally the first rule of politics: don't predict elections based on early voting.

I cannot believe you exprienced the 2014, 2016, and 2020 elections and still think early voting can predict outcomes.

[MT Treasurer]

Perdue makes clear that there is no daylight between him and Trump

Perdue needs the R base (not just reliable high-propensity ones but those drawn to Trump who might have otherwise decided to sit this one out) to turn out in force, so I don’t see what’s supposed to be surprising here. He’s betting on high R turnout + that the kind of genuinely 'persuadable' Biden voter (an incredibly small group) he can actually still reach will be moved by concerns about a D trifecta. It’s a narrow path of course, but it’s the only one he has!

It’s really not that hard to understand.

[MT Treasurer]

That is sadly true.

The Republican Party has become the cult of Trump.

Aside from a few exceptions, one has to be a Trump bootlicker to have any chance of winning.

I agree that this kind of personality cult which ignores or completely distracts from the issues/voting records/policies of the candidates (something that is probably hurting Republicans a little in this race) is unfortunate and not healthy in any political system. You can tell Perdue’s only doing it to save his job, and I honestly feel a little sorry for him (although I know you guys don’t ).