Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Badger]

Alright, so I've finished my first draft of Georgia 2018 Abrams win benchmarks. I've decided for the time being to settle on a nominal win rather than a majority win, simply because I'm not sure where else it's feasible to stretch the numbers to get to 50%. Nevertheless, I did manage to get Abrams to 49.3% when all was said and done; in the end, this is equivalent to closing 223k of the 262k deficit Carter had in 2014. Obviously the easiest way for Abrams to get a majority with these figures as a baseline is if Kemp's raw turnout is lower than Deal's was in 2014.

I'm open to suggestions or recommendations in some parts of the state. Below is a map and the list with each county's benchmarks. I'll probably turn this into an interactive map in the next day or two.

County-by-County Benchmarks (2014 and 2018 Results + Swings)

So here are the interactive maps in case anybody's interested:


Abrams - County Plurality Benchmarks (Margin)

Abrams - County Plurality Benchmarks (Swing)

Insufficient. Your figures don't get Abrams to 50% plus one, so the race goes to a runoff which she almost inevitably loses.

[Badger]

Alright, so I went ahead (even though I think it's a stretch) and added the enhanced metro figures I mentioned above to get to 50%. There - happy?

Thrilled, thank you.

My point was simply that getting electoral Coalition strong enough for Abrams to deny Kemp and outright majority Victory on Election night isn't tremendously difficult, but the difference between that and finding a coalition that gets her to a plurality victory is still the same result, a purely academic one, compared to Kemp getting an outright majority win.

The only interest I have is to see how Abrams can realistically pull off the 50% plus one she needs to become governor. Which is why I am still bearish about her chances compared to most of the Forum.

[Badger]

I'll concede my point since you have heard it straight from the source via the candidate and campaign manager. The field work is definitely centered on turning out Democratic voters. I'm excited to see what their GOTV roll-out is like. I'm not privy to all that information yet. So we all shall see!

You can also take it from the candidate herself on national tv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozNvM45yKWw

I too have pause with this approach, for exactly the well-described reasons Griff gave.

Also re: Enten's analysis of likely increased Democratic vote in the runoff, I guess he makes some points. However, as Griffin points out, it's contrary to history, both older and recent. Also, while Democratic activists will focus nationally on helping her for the runoff, the same can be said of national GOP activists (and money) then focusing on helping Kemp.

On the other hand, there is something to the fact Democratic exuberance and turnout has been off the charts for special elections this cycle. So perhaps that would apply ahistorically to a 2018 southern gubernatorial runoff? That idea further fits in with Abrams' strategy for a turnout based, rather than persuasion based campaign, as runoffs are entirely about the former.

So maybe I'm getting too 4-D chess here, but could it be Abrams isn't focusing so much on possibly pulling an upset ED majority win, but rather on simply ensuring Kemp doesn't get a majority himself, and thereafter using the turnout machine she's heavily investing in to get most of those assiduously ID'd and targeted low propensity ED voters to the polls for the runoff?

[Badger]

[snip]

[snip]

This looks fantastic, thanks Griffin!

[Badger]

Some of the people in this thread are just unreal. Im glad it will be revealed tomorrow that the majority of Georgians are still sane.  Some real nutjobs in here!

Please quote what posts were made by nutjobs.

Dead silence. Telling.

[Badger]

You guys take a feminist liberal woman from Wisconsin, stick her in Georgia running around with Oprah and you get all confused why you lost the Governorship of Georgia?

Ever been in a situation where someone says, "Who was the moron who came up with that idea?" Well, the same applies here.

It would be like Republicans recruiting Haley Barbour to run for Governor of New York.

Takes a moron to know a moron I guess.

[Badger]

You guys take a feminist liberal woman from Wisconsin, stick her in Georgia running around with Oprah and you get all confused why you lost the Governorship of Georgia?

Ever been in a situation where someone says, "Who was the moron who came up with that idea?" Well, the same applies here.

It would be like Republicans recruiting Haley Barbour to run for Governor of New York.

I agree. I said several times that Georgia was not ready to flip in 2018, and it seems like I was right. However, Georgia has not been called, and a runoff looks probable. However, Kemp seems favored to win the runoff.

It's not going to flip this year, but it's going to happen--and soon.  I always maintained that the Democrats have been in a huge hole, and it's going to take some time to dig out.

The Democrats have now found the formula in Georgia:

1) Forget the rural areas once and for all.
2) Focus on the rapidly expanding blue (Atlas red) metro Atlanta complex--which now includes Gwinnett, Cobb, Douglas, Henry, Newton, and Rockdale on top of the existing Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton.  Fayette, Forsyth, and Cherokee will stay red but will become bluer in the years to come.  And work to flip more state House and Senate seats--which went Democratic this year in many of the north Atlanta suburbs.  It will force the current Republican legislature to protect their congressional incumbents and make the races that much more competitive in the future.  We're probably going to win GA-06 and come very close in GA-07 (and this will easily flip in 2020).
3) Statewide elections will take more time, but I am very encouraged--just need to keep working to refine the strategy going forward.

I can't agree on number one. A big reason Abrams apparently lost was the bottom fell out for her support and rural areas. Don't forget, Southwestern Georgia is heavily world, but also heavily black. That I believe is where the turnout faltered. It is far more difficult to organize rural areas that it is urban areas, for the simple reason that people could go door-to-door in an apartment complex much much quicker than they can on Rural back roads. Without any evidence in front of me, my wild-ass guess is that if the Georgia rural black belt counties had turn out equivalent to the urban counties, Abrams would have won. Feel free to correct me with math though.

But as far as trying to do Reach Out to the supposed still existing wwc ancestral a blue dog Democrat blah blah blah blah blah, I agree. Fuc them. There are a useless myth. Spread a little bit of money to the local County organizations so they can squeeze what pockets of democratic strengths are are in their individual counties, and otherwise put that money towards turning out the vote in metro Atlanta, and to a lesser degree Savannah.

[Badger]

You guys take a feminist liberal woman from Wisconsin, stick her in Georgia running around with Oprah and you get all confused why you lost the Governorship of Georgia?

Ever been in a situation where someone says, "Who was the moron who came up with that idea?" Well, the same applies here.

It would be like Republicans recruiting Haley Barbour to run for Governor of New York.

She was raised in Mississippi.  She's just as Southern-fried as Brian Kemp.

Don't bother Mike " look internet! I put a towel on my head and pretending to be a Muslim like some 1950s cartoon. aren't I funny" Nazi with facts.

LOL at my auto spell changing his last name! But you know what? I'm not going to bother correcting it.

[Badger]

A fellow Georgian and I were discussing what this election might have looked like if we could have had the best of both worlds: Carter's better numbers and/or Abrams' better numbers for each county. Well, I've went ahead and calculated it.

For the counties where Abrams' margin was better, I used 2018 percentages (below; yellow). Where they were better for Carter, I used the 2014 percentages (green). Because of the vastly different turnout levels for the 2 elections, I took each county's share of the electorate for both 2014 and 2018 and averaged it, and used that to calculate the raw votes each candidate received in an election with 3.9 million voters.



I also had to reconcile the Libertarian vote share differences: in short, I gave 10% of the excess Libertarian vote share to Abrams and 90% to Kemp (realistic - maybe even overly generous to Kemp).

Not only would she be in the lead, she would have won outright:

Hybrid Carter-Abrams Majority Win

50.15% - 1962929 - Abrams
48.90% - 1913946 - Kemp
0.95% - 37088 - Metz

(Colors are exact Atlas colors but some counties show up a shade darker/lighter due to the way I have to tell Google Fusion Tables to color the map; Douglas is a good example, as it's below 40% GOP, it colors it with >60% Dem)

What if you merged The Carter and Abrams margins, but kept turn out at 2018 level? I suspect going forward that's the only realistic numbers to use. Turn that won't always be so hyped up is this year, but it it's going to be closer to this rather than 2014 and older elections going forward. Every off-year election is now a battle to the death it seems.

[Badger]

Even if Abrams losing, she improved on Hillary's margin despite only focusing on Democrats. Considering she's only down ~1.5% (from HRC -4), 2020 is definitely in contention.

I will go out on a limb and say that even in relatively inelastic Georgia and state race is becoming increasingly partisan, that there is still a distinction between a state and federal race in terms of how much a blue or red State's voters will give the other party's candidates a shake. In other words, Charlie Baker is Never Ever Getting elected to the US Senate, and Georgia Democrats will have more difficulty electing a senator than they will a governor. Demographics are moving in their direction to be sure, but I suspect the governor's mansion will fall before one of the Senators, boring individual issues such as a mega Gaff or scandal

[Badger]

Finally saw a Raffensperger ad (there have been plenty of Barrow ads) attacking Barrow as a threat to the integrity of future elections.

I sometimes wonder how some Republicans can sleep at night.

too stupid to realize their evil, probably.

Or just plain complacent. I've said it before and I'll send it again. Judas sold out Christ for 30 pieces of silver, Benedict Arnold sold out George Washington for command of West Point, and Republicans have sold out this country and it's basic Democratic institutions for tax cuts and a stacked judiciary. The worst part is even the Smart Ones happily go along with it. Pathetic and enraging.

In regards to the Fred, these turnout numbers look like absolute hell for Barrow.

[Badger]

To contrast, look at the GA-GOV primary. Many people wanted to clear the way for Abram's opponent, Stacy Adams, and many in the GADEM didnt want Abrams to run and disrupt the primary. But the deadly primary allowed Abrams to emerge, and also aired out the dirty laundry that was found out about Adams.

Who? What? That is not how the Governor primary transpired at all. Abrams announced first and was the frontrunner the entire time. There were obviously people skittish about her chances (me included) but an Abrams victory was never in doubt. There was no "dirty laundry" exposed in the primary either other than Abrams writing the Op-Ed about her own debt.

I may have not had the best grip on the GA-Gov primary, and I apologize. But i feel that my point is still basically the same.

(Also, I was talking about the problems that surfaced with Evans, which quelled the idea that she was the candidate who should win and the stronger candidate)

You're not inherently wrong (though it was never really public). The state party apparatus - or rather the overwhelming majority of its individuals - was heavily in favor of Evans over Abrams (which I'd say was a good part of why Evans outraised Abrams at various points). This was, from what I gathered, mainly due to a perception of Abrams as being selfish, abrasive, etc by those who worked within her orbit in the past, perhaps in combination with a belief that Abrams also couldn't win.

While I certainly didn't conduct a universal poll, I never encountered somebody within the inner workings of the party who had nice things to say about her in the years before her campaign. However, given the legislative caucus' endorsements in the primary, I'd say the sentiment was accurate by and large.

When you say her in this second paragraph, do you mean Abrams?

I guess that leads me to question asked you if Abrams was / is such in a brace of a****** who's Rob most of her legislative colleagues the wrong way, how did she ever wind up minority leader?

[Badger]

So going back a few pages, what is going on with Southwest Georgia? A large African American population, relative big speaking outside Savannah in Georgia, but it's been shifting Republican to the point that even Bishop has been somewhat threatened in bad years. What gives , Adam?