Georgia senate seats runoff(s) megathread

[ProgressiveModerate]

This runoff is weird.  The polls look Lean R, but the EV data looks Lean D, which is basically the opposite of November when the EV data was an early warning sign that many polls were off in favor of Dems (though less so in GA specifically).  IDK what is going on.  

TBF, most people in November thought the EV data was generally good for Ds at the time; most of the warning signs were really only hindsight. Same thing could be true in these races.

[ProgressiveModerate]

My model is now Democrat + 9.3; down from 9.7 yesterday but up from 8.7 2 days ago. The gap between the estimated D total vs R total is getting real close to 300k votes.



If I had to guess, +9.3 is likely a slight undercount, but that's speculation on my part. It'll be interesting to see where the early vote numbers head from here

[ProgressiveModerate]

Isn't it quite possible that the 55+ over is up compared to GE b/c there's also more older black voters voting right now? Could be attributed to the higher black %?

I see what people are saying about the White % being about the same and blacks being up, but wouldn't Dems want the black % to be up anyway, since they voted 9/10 for Biden? I feel like they'd be okay if Whites stayed the same % but Blacks went up quite a bit, since it's more likely assured votes for Biden.

Not to mention, we're at 2.1M compared to 4M, and we don't know what slice of the white vote this is, but it does appear it's coming from more leftward areas than rightward (i.e. more college+ whites)

both are good point- and its true that black voters support dems by a higher % than other minorities like Latino voters, which tended to be more split in November.

Any thoughts regarding why under 34 is so much lower? (do they vote more on election day, is the drop off mainly Repubs under 34, are they just hard to get to turn out, etc)

To me, it seems like a mixed bag.

Many of the Atlanta counties, notably Clay, DeKalb, and Fulton, have a much higher share of younger voters than the statewide average (Just look at the statistics for GA-4, 5, 6, 7, 13), but a lot of black belt counties have numbers on par or below the statewide average. Your traditional red Trump rural county seems to be about on par, along with the mid-sized cities.

[ProgressiveModerate]

What incentive is there for Trump to hurt Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party? Like seriously what incentive or advantage? He’s actively campaigning for Perdue and Loeffler yet wants to hurt Mitch and the senate GOP?
I’m trying to put the puzzle together but I don’t get it

My attempt at a guess:
1) He doesn't want to be the only one to lose Georgia & look like the only failure on the GA campaign trail (misery loves company).
2) But he will never pass up an opportunity to get in front of a rally of Trump fans.

Not sure why else he's supporting the $2000, unless he forgetting that Biden supporters will also get the money (since usually he is intent on punishing those who did not vote for him).  Although, this could indicate a calculation to look better to the public... either b/c he intends to run in 2024, or b/c it will benefit his plans for a media network or show after the election.

Or maybe he just has no clue what he's doing.

[ProgressiveModerate]

JMC poll:

Warnock +9
Ossoff +8

https://winwithjmc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Georgia-Senate-Runoff-Executive-Summary.pdf

https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/30/democrats-hold-leads-in-georgia-runoffs/

garbage poll,but I'll still take it.

This poll assumes that most of the vote is already banked and only a handful people will additionally vote on Tuesday.

If a lot of Rs vote on Tuesday instead, this poll will be flawed.

One consistent theme though is that the GOP seems to be at least 300k votes in debt right now, potentially even 400k or 500k. I expect Election Day to be huge, but even if it’s huge, they need those votes to break pretty heavily in their favor, which is doable, but won’t be easy nonetheless

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/30/politics/biden-harris-campaign-georgia/index.html

Harris is going there on Sunday and Biden Monday. Would Biden risk political capital unless this was at least leaning Dem?

At this point, it seems like the electorate seems pretty likely to end up Biden-leaning, however a Biden-leaning electorate produced Republican down ballot victories in many instances, so trying to get as many straight ticket voters as possible in these runoffs is a good strategy for Democrats.

[ProgressiveModerate]

If Democrats win these runoffs and therefore get a Senate majority, their Senate majority will be because:

-Republicans flunked WV and MT senate races in 2018
-Martha McSally
-Narrowly flipping NH-Sen in 2016 and actually investing despite it seeming uncompetitive at first
-2 special elections in 2020
-A runoffs law put back into place by Republicans that was designed to help boost their chances of winning

[ProgressiveModerate]

If Democrats win these runoffs and therefore get a Senate majority, their Senate majority will be because:

-Republicans flunked WV and MT senate races in 2018
-Martha McSally
-Narrowly flipping NH-Sen in 2016 and actually investing despite it seeming uncompetitive at first
-2 special elections in 2020
-A runoffs law put back into place by Republicans that was designed to help boost their chances of winning

They also flunked FL in 2018 and NC in 2020.

True, but Republicans losing a Senate seat in WEST VIRGINIA, a state where Trump nearly won 70% of the vote, is more embarrassing. In hindsight, NC was always going to be difficult, and it's really impossible to know if Cunningham would've won since Biden himself lost NC, but yeah FL-2018 is really unexceptable.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The reason I am so skeptical of the polls showing ossof and warnock up by high single digits is that we have an election to compare those numbers to. Biden won by 0.3 in GA, Perdue won by 2 with that same electorate.

And, while the EV does show dems doing slightly better than the EV in November, it doesn’t suggest a +7 D race at all.

Sometimes, the top lines of polls are enough to discredit them. Who are all these people switching from Perdue to ossof since November?

The thing is the current data suggests Democrats doing not just slightly, but notably better in the EV than in November is pretty much every metric except age, but counties in metro Atlanta still have above average turnout of younger folks so most of the drop-off seems to be in more rural areas anyways. While I agree the final race result is extremely unlikely to be D+7, Democrats currently seem to be up in the EV numbers by anywhere from 7 points to 15 points, which is consistently higher than in the GE using the same methodology to calculate that number, generally it seems to be about 5-8% better than how Biden was doing.

As for your second question, we could see some people change their vote from November for 2 reasons.

First off Biden has already won, which may give some swing voters reason to vote R in these Senate races instead of D since there's no longer a need for a check on Trump.

On the flipside of that, these Senate races are being taken much more seriously than they were pre-November, and heavily nationalized, so more voters are aware about who canidates are and it increases polarization; someone who may have voted Biden-Perdue in November because he was an inoffensive incumbent has fallen victim to this partisanship and now vote for Ossoff. We also saw slight undercounts in both senate races compared to the GE.

Again, I agree that Ossoff and/or Warnock winning by 7 is improbable, but at this point, it isn't any less likely than Perdue and Loefller winning by that margin.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Lol, I'm in Massachusetts and I just got an ad for Perdue for Senate

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems lead down to +8.7 in my current model.

Again, based upon my methodology, I would lean towards this number slightly underestimating D's current lead, but that's speculation on my part.

Despite Republican's narrowing the margin, they aren't really netting any votes.



If in person votes broke how they did in the GE, the GOP would need an election day turnout of about 1.2 million to win according to my model.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Just out of curiosity, why do folks think there will be a massive election day vote on 1/5? Both parties have been pushing the early vote (especially in-person) extremely aggressively so if anything I would expect the Election Day vote to be lower as a proportion of the overall vote compared to the November. Also the timing of the election day is not terribly convenient. I know I'm in back to back virtual meetings for work for the first three days of that week since everyone is returning from the holidays and getting things back up and running again. I'm going to drop off my ballot today or tomorrow, but there would be a good chance I just wouldn't vote at all if I didn't.

Maybe rural Georgians just have more free time, but IMO, it'd be more effective for both parties to push the early vote so that they can micro-target their remaining base voters on election day and make pitches for the remaining persuadable voters in the closing days.

If you look at election results from states which break down the vote totals by voting method (early in-person, absentee, election day, provisional, etc.), you will notice that in most cases Republicans do better on Election Day itself compared to other forms of voting. For example, in North Carolina, Democratic candidates carried the early/absentee vote but Republicans crushed the Election Day vote, carrying them to victory in most cases.

I agree Reps will win the election-day vote but why do we think the election day vote will be a higher percentage or even the same percentage of the total vote than it was in November? Only about 20% of Georgians voted on election day in November and I would think it's going to be lower in the runoffs because of how hard both parties have been pushing early voting this time.

I think in general, Atlas has an optimistic perception of who your average voter is.

Many assume because so many who voted in the GE have not voted in the runoff, that must mean E-day will be huge, which it probably will be, but there will still be a notable number of people who voted in 2020 who didn't bother to vote in these runoffs for whatever reason. There's also a notable number of people who did not vote in the 2020 GE who have already voted on the flip-side of that.

I also think 2020 taught many Atlas Democrats a lesson about how much the e-day vote can dramatically change the outlook of a race. Now that means to some that no matter how good the early numbers may look for Ds Republicans are bound to cancel it out on e-day.

Furthermore, only 3% of GE voters who voted on e-day have voted in the runoff thus far.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems lead down to +8.7 in my current model.

Again, based upon my methodology, I would lean towards this number slightly underestimating D's current lead, but that's speculation on my part.

Despite Republican's narrowing the margin, they aren't really netting any votes.



If in person votes broke how they did in the GE, the GOP would need an election day turnout of about 1.2 million to win according to my model.

Is that mathematically possible for the ED turnout to be that high?

Easily sure. The GOP should hope for about 32% of the vote to be from e-day if it were to break the same as in the GE, which is very plausible. The early vote numbers are good for Ds but this is still a knifes edge race as the e-day turnout could be a larger % of the vote compared to the GE and could be more Republican leaning as well.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems lead down to +8.7 in my current model.

Again, based upon my methodology, I would lean towards this number slightly underestimating D's current lead, but that's speculation on my part.

Despite Republican's narrowing the margin, they aren't really netting any votes.



If in person votes broke how they did in the GE, the GOP would need an election day turnout of about 1.2 million to win according to my model.

Is that mathematically possible for the ED turnout to be that high?

Easily sure. The GOP should hope for about 32% of the vote to be from e-day which is very plausible.

Given that E-Day was only 19% of the vote in the recent GE, I have a hard time believing 32% could be realistic. In the same vein, of course, the JMC poll today that had E-Day at only 7% of the vote was equally unrealistic. We should expect E-Day to be somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the total vote - any more or less is extraordinarily implausible.

I would have to disagree. First off, you have all the holidays going on which might cause some to put it off till the last minute and secondly, runoffs have historically had a higher share of the e-day vote. There are still a lot of people who voted in 2020 who have not voted yet in these runoffs which means there is a pretty wide plausible range of outcomes.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Given that E-Day was only 19% of the vote in the recent GE, I have a hard time believing 32% could be realistic. In the same vein, of course, the JMC poll today that had E-Day at only 7% of the vote was equally unrealistic. We should expect E-Day to be somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the total vote - any more or less is extraordinarily implausible.

See my post at the bottom of the previous page. 35% is perfectly possible. Even with unprecedented conditions, there's a very strong correlation between runoffs and a higher share of vote being ED. For it to be substantially less would imply an electorate of 3,000,000 voters which seems very, very unlikely (for a variety of reasons, not including most voters have 1-2 fewer days of early voting in the runoff when compared to the GE).

And for those who want specifics from November:

Early Vote: Biden +5.73 (80.27% of vote)     52.35-46.62-1.03
EDay Vote: Trump +22.02 (19.73% of vote)  59.95-37.93-2.12

 

Did the majority of Under 30s vote early or on election day in November?

This I do not know (I highly doubt a majority voted on Election Day). However, I am very confident that a disproportionate share of 18-29s voted on Election Day (i.e. maybe 30-35% compared to 20% overall).

I think the real question is if the E-Day turnout is higher than 32%, will it less Republican than in the GE, and if it's below 32%, will it be more Republican. E-day turnout AND the way it breaks are the 2 variables here, and it's totally possible for Rs to win with only 25% e-day vote if it broke heavily in their favor and for Dems to win with a 35% e-day vote if it did not break super heavily GOP.

Also, would like to remind everyone that these current partisanship numbers are estimated and not concrete.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Given that E-Day was only 19% of the vote in the recent GE, I have a hard time believing 32% could be realistic. In the same vein, of course, the JMC poll today that had E-Day at only 7% of the vote was equally unrealistic. We should expect E-Day to be somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the total vote - any more or less is extraordinarily implausible.

See my post at the bottom of the previous page. 35% is perfectly possible. Even with unprecedented conditions, there's a very strong correlation between runoffs and a higher share of vote being ED. For it to be substantially less would imply an electorate of 3,000,000 voters which seems very, very unlikely (for a variety of reasons, not including most voters have 1-2 fewer days of early voting in the runoff when compared to the GE).

And for those who want specifics from November:

Early Vote: Biden +5.73 (80.27% of vote)     52.35-46.62-1.03
EDay Vote: Trump +22.02 (19.73% of vote)  59.95-37.93-2.12

 

Did the majority of Under 30s vote early or on election day in November?

This I do not know (I highly doubt a majority voted on Election Day). However, I am very confident that a disproportionate share of 18-29s voted on Election Day (i.e. maybe 30-35% compared to 20% overall).

I think the real question is if the E-Day turnout is higher than 32%, will it less Republican than in the GE, and if it's below 32%, will it be more Republican. E-day turnout AND the way it breaks are the 2 variables here, and it's totally possible for Rs to win with only 25% e-day vote if it broke heavily in their favor and for Dems to win with a 35% e-day vote if it did not break super heavily GOP.

Also, would like to remind everyone that these current partisanship numbers are estimated and not concrete.

That's the gist of the question. A lot can probably be answered by an analysis of the black vote; how much of it is cannibalization from ED November voters turned off by the long lines they saw during the first few days of EV, how many are first-time/new voters and what percentages of D/R EVs from November have already early voted. I haven't delved too deeply into the data for the runoff, so those numbers may be available already.

As for the black vote, this is part of the reason I believe my model slightly underestimate's D's current lead overall. In the GE, you had several black belt counties where the e-day vote was actually more Democratic than the early vote, so I suspect many of these counties may not have that same phenomenon again if the black vote skews earlier than in the GE, which is one reason to believe the GE vote could break more R than in the GE.

As for the new voters, it's really impossible to say, but looking at the Demographics and where they come from, I would suspect they net Democrats at least 10k votes; it skews younger and is minority majority, and they come from generally bluer counties.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems lead down to +8.7 in my current model.

Again, based upon my methodology, I would lean towards this number slightly underestimating D's current lead, but that's speculation on my part.

Despite Republican's narrowing the margin, they aren't really netting any votes.



If in person votes broke how they did in the GE, the GOP would need an election day turnout of about 1.2 million to win according to my model.

Is that mathematically possible for the ED turnout to be that high?

Easily sure. The GOP should hope for about 32% of the vote to be from e-day if it were to break the same as in the GE, which is very plausible. The early vote numbers are good for Ds but this is still a knifes edge race as the e-day turnout could be a larger % of the vote compared to the GE and could be more Republican leaning as well.

So that poll published this morning about only 7% voting on Election Day has to be complete bullsh**t then?

I mean, elections tend to be full of surprises, but below 10% seems very unlikely to me.

[ProgressiveModerate]

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

Bitecofer is kind of a Dem hack; she does have some interesting ideas but really missed the mark this cycle with her forecasts.

I personally think that the only 2 things the early vote numbers indicate with relative certainty is:

-This won't be a redux of the 2008 Senate race
-Democrats are doing better in the early vote than in the GE

Just remember though that because they're doing well now may mean that the GOP does even better with the in person vote and it's enough to cancel it out. It's really difficult to tell because this election is polarized heavily by even the method in which people vote.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Today will be a good benchmark as to how many votes Republicans will have to net in Election Day. Currently, they seem to be a in a hole between 200k and 350k votes, with around 275k being the most likely. A few mail in ballots may trickle in after today, so Ds lead will probably slightly grow by a few thousand by Election Day. If the GOP is 300k in debt let’s say;

An e-day turnout of 600k would have to break 3:1 for Perdue abs Loefeller
An e-day turnout of 900k would have to break 2:1 for Perdue and Loefeller
An e-day turnout of 1.2 million would have to break 5:3 for Perdue and Loefeller
An e-day turnout of 1.5 million would have to break 3:2 for Perdue abs Loefeller

Again, these are all estimates and not exact numbers

[ProgressiveModerate]

Just got another Perdue ad lol.

Anyone else noticed how all his ads end through him angrily walking in a random field

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dem estimated margin continues to shrink; now down to D+8.1. Despite this, Republicans aren't doing a very good job at making up their defecit.



Today is the last day or early voting; I suspect it'll bump D's margin down to +8 or so, but then late arriving mail ballot bumps it up to +9 or even +10 before election day.

The GOP seems on track to need to net about 300k votes on e-day

[ProgressiveModerate]

Do you guys think that Kelly Loefller being such a poor canidate inherently helps Republicans by making ticket splitters more likely to go the Perdue-Warnock direction as opposed to even split in how ticket splitters split their ticket?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Loeffler is not significantly weaker than Perdue.

Yes she is.

We'll see.

To me, it seems like Perdue and Ossoff are both the less offensive canidates with less dirt compared to Warnock and Loeffler, who have been more heavily attacked.

[ProgressiveModerate]

If the e-day vote broke as it did in the GE, Perdue and Loeffler would need a turnout of about 1.4 million on e-day according to my model, up about a million from yesterday.

I would say at this point, I would rather be Ossoff and Warnock based on the raw statistics, though history makes me think twice.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Funfact: More voters who didn't vote in the 2020 GE have voted in these runoffs thus far than people who voted on e-day in the GE.