Georgia senate seats runoff(s) megathread

[Хahar 🤔]

For what it's worth, I had an e-mail exactly like this one appear in my work inbox late last night:

https://twitter.com/niel/status/1346252966018355200

I've talked to a few other Georgia voters who also received this e-mail. (Interestingly, everyone I've talked to received it at their work address.) I don't expect it to make a huge difference if it's directed at Atlanta-area office workers, but anything that depresses election-day Republican turnout is noteworthy.

[Хahar 🤔]

Wow, welcome back Xahar!

Thanks, it felt like time. I don't want to derail this thread too much but it's nice to see you around.

[Хahar 🤔]

Worth noting here is that the Democrats' campaigning in non-English languages was nuts, especially for a state like Georgia which is overwhelmingly English speaking, especially compared to other reddish states like Florida, Texas, or Arizona. Not only was there Spanish language outreach, there was Korean, Vietnamese, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink. Really hope this continues and that the national Democrats take notes.

As a Fulton County voter, I got bilingual literature addressed to me in English and Bengali. Unfortunately the Bengali was completely unreadable due to encoding issues that should not exist in any computer from after 1998, but it was the thought that counted.

[Хahar 🤔]

The real question is going forward whether or not GA becomes Virginia, a blue state, or North Carolina, a swing state that’s always in reach but still hard.

If current population trends hold it’ll become VA for sure. The Atlanta metro area is just getting bigger and bigger as a share of the vote in the state, whereas the research triangle / Charlotte etc. are staying pretty constant in NC. Plus Dems are winning the Atlanta MSA by more and more every cycle.

2022 will be the last competitive election cycle in GA. If Warnock loses then his opponent will be beyond DOA in 2028, and if Rs hold the governors mansion whoever succeeds Kemp will lose decisively, probably even in a Dem midterm year.

AZ seems to be trending slower and will remain competitive throughout the decade, I would guess. Trump also had a uniquely bad relationship with Arizona moderates that the rest of the GOP doesn’t seem to have. I’ll bet Rs hold the governor’s mansion there until the next R-president midterm, at which point it’s gone for good. And I’d also bet there will be at least one more R senator there before it trends out of competitiveness.

The other factor with Arizona is that there's a constant influx of elderly white voters, as with Florida. This is largely absent in Georgia thanks to its lack of significant coastline; to the contrary emigrants to Georgia tend to be disproportionately non-white.

[Хahar 🤔]

This is what it looked like the last time Vernon Jones ran for Senate. Jones is red on the left (Democratic primary) and blue on the right (Democratic primary runoff).



Seeing as that he clearly did not get a lot of white votes, I wonder how many people there might be to vote for Vernon Jones in the primary both 2008 and 2022.

[Хahar 🤔]

Question for Griffin: Do you have a map of the turnout decrease by county between 2020-Pres and 2021-Senate?

Given the election was won essencially by hardline Trumpists not turning out, it would be interesting to see.

He posted it earlier:

Looking at the map, the highest turnout counties were mostly GOP counties in northern GA

Curious how you came to this conclusion?

Just as a share of the presidential (which is obviously a baseline metric):



Of the 20 counties with the highest turnout as a share of November, only 1 is a North Georgia GOP county and the vast majority are Democratic or swing counties.

[Хahar 🤔]

Atlas people often overrate the importance of identity in primary challenges and underrate the importance of community ties and relationships. There's a reason why somebody like Steve Cohen or Gene Green won every time, while Joe Crowley or Donna Shalala lost due to their weak ties with the communities in their district.

Ossoff doesn't seem like he has those relationships yet, though it's hard to tell--but a lot of that is a function of him not having held office before. Presumably now that he's a successful statewide politician he'll continue to build ties in the Black community.

It's worth pointing out that in the primary, Teresa Tomlinson received endorsements from Max Cleland, Roy Barnes, and Jason Carter. She had the support of the entire class of white Democrats who have been running for statewide office for the last thirty years. By contrast, Jon Ossoff had the endorsement of basically every prominent black Democrat in the state. As far as I can tell, his prominence in politics is entirely the product of his personal relationships with John Lewis and Hank Johnson, both of whom he worked for.

That is to say, the point is well-made in general, and in this specific case it's abundantly clear to me that Ossoff does have those relationships. He wouldn't have been elected without them.

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm tired of the endless discussion of voters who split their tickets, of whom there were clearly almost none, and it's frustrating to me that it's dominating discussion of these elections everywhere when there's so much else to discuss.