Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Adam Griffin]

Bacon King, Griffin and any other Georgians: how optimistic are you about 2018?

Not particularly. We'll need more polls to get a real idea of what's happening, but I'm not very confident that outer metro ATL is going to behave in 2018 how it did in 2016. Even if it did, that alone wouldn't be enough - you need a real rural rebound for 2018 victory regardless of what various candidates claim. Also, look at state legislative special elections for an idea: some have overperformed expectations (and even flipped), but a good chunk have performed exactly as expected (i.e. several points worse than in a normal election cycle).

You also have the uncanny reality of GA behaving contrary to the national climate (at least in the gubernatorial elections) for the past 5 cycles; whenever the country swings left, GA swings right; and vice-versa. Of course this isn't a guarantee, but there's clear precedent for GA to ignore the national climate in midterm elections relative to its past performance.

[Adam Griffin]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/why-the-hell-are-we-standing-down/


Our boy Brian Kemp strikes again. Didn’t want to comply with the Federal Government’s attempts to secure the elections from Russian interference

I give kudos to Kemp for playing the long-game here. In many ways, he began to do a complete 180 in 2014 (starting with the New Georgia Project fiasco) to position himself for winning a statewide Republican primary. It sounds pretty crazy considering, but I even briefly considered voting for Kemp in 2014 prior to that year's primary - and he was the only Republican for whom I even entertained this notion. This was the guy who personally pushed for (and secured) online voter registration in Georgia, got opt-out AVR adopted and implemented a complete overhaul of the SoS website that is 100x more transparent and easy-to-use than it was prior to his tenure.

As I said a few pages prior, the campaign personas of the two front-runners each belong in reality to their primary opponent. Kemp is not a reactionary conservative by any means, but he's playing one to get the nod. Cagle is very much a reactionary conservative, but has been blessed with the establishment's support by virtue of his extended incumbency (though obviously he too has now started playing the out-right-the-right game).

[Adam Griffin]

Greene has held on for three reasons: existing loyalty to his name (which was associated with the Democratic Party for decades), elevated black support and a luck of the draw with respect to opponents.

2016 is a great example of his luck, where the presumptive Democratic nominee was "discovered" to not live in the district after qualifying had ended; was a supposed clerical error on behalf of the local BoE and the Secretary of State, who had him registered as a voter in that district when he resided about one mile outside of it. The SoS would not allow Democrats to qualify a replacement. Greene ultimately faced an independent challenger, garnering 62% of the vote in 2016.

However, Greene also enjoys higher-than-average support from black voters in the district as well. I disagree (at least in small scope) with RFK on black turnout guaranteeing a Democratic victory (let alone Abrams guaranteeing some surge of it). There are certain areas in Georgia where Republicans can easily win 20% or more of the black vote (HD 151 and the broader area influenced by Fort Benning is one of these areas, as is the area surrounding Fort Stewart); Bacon King and I looked at precinct data some years ago and came away with no other conclusion based on turnout and vote totals (Georgia reports exactly who votes by race (by precinct), so it's easy to confirm this).

Even in 2014, black turnout was arguably sufficient enough to oust Greene had it played out like it usually does in the rest of the state. Black turnout in the district wasn't terrible that year: it's just that the area is losing black population to urban parts of Georgia in many places at an alarming rate. Despite that, even Carter won the district by 9 points...while Greene likewise carried it by 10. When you look at comparable, heavily-white counties in this part of the state and the fact that they did not enjoy any monumental swing to Carter out of old blue dog loyalty, one comes away observing that a hefty chunk of black voters crossed over and re-elected Greene. Ergo, higher black turnout in a midterm is no guarantee that Greene will be in danger of losing.

[Adam Griffin]

27/91/70 is the most plausible formula for 50%+1 in 2018 (assuming an electorate that's 61% white, 30% black, 9% other). Remember that it's not enough to win with a plurality here, and it's highly implausible even during the best of times that Democrats could pull off a victory in a run-off. Just look at the swings in the special legislative elections in GA this past year for your proof.

The Democrat could also win with 25% of the white vote if the black vote is either at least 94% Democratic or 32% of the electorate, but no Democrat black or white has managed to score the former figure except President Obama (and none the latter - yet).

[Adam Griffin]

Wouldn't the electorate be more like 32% black if Abrams is the nominee? It was 32% black in 2012, and I figure Abrams would do a decent job bringing up black turnout. Black people actually have pretty good midterm turnout in Georgia. I believe it was 30% black even in 2014.

It was 30% black in '08, '12 & '16; 28% in 2010 and 29% in 2014.

Until/unless proven otherwise, I remain highly skeptical that the presence of a black state-level candidate will dramatically increase black turnout or support. There have been a variety of black candidates for multiple statewide offices in GA in the recent past (including 2 Senate candidates) and none of them demonstrably increased turnout. Furthermore, there appears to be no evidence that any of these candidates exceeded the 90% threshold in terms of black support.

Obama did of course, but those were very different circumstances for a number of reasons. At best, I think any Abrams effort may modestly increase the black share of the electorate: let's not forget that almost all of the "low-hanging fruit" so to speak were activated/engaged in 2008 and 2012 (and those voters largely continued to participate in 2010 and 2014, at least proportionately speaking), and there will also likely be a surge of interest in voting among non-black Democrats, moderates and independents as well.

[Adam Griffin]

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Is turnout among the Dems good relative to the Republicans in Georgia from these obviously very early figures?

I tracked this information in 2014, but I can't find the information now. I thought I might have fed it into a Google Fusion Table and mapped it out, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

(However, if you'd like to see what percentage of each county's primary ballots were DEM/GOP in the past 2 midterms, click here)

GA's early vote tends to start out somewhat close to the final composition of votes, and becomes increasingly Democratic throughout each day of early voting, with Democrats pulling even or outright winning the early vote. I recall in the 2014 general, projections were suggesting (based on raw demographics alone) at the end of early voting that Carter and Nunn were likely winning those votes.

Anyway, here are some figures that might be helpful:

2018, Early Vote Primary Composition (as of 5/4): 52.4% GOP, 47.6% DEM
2016, Primary Composition: 65.1% GOP, 34.9% DEM
2016, Pres Primary Composition: 63% GOP, 37% DEM
2014, Primary Composition: 64.8% GOP, 35.2% DEM
2012, Primary Composition: 67.5% GOP, 32.5% DEM
2010, Primary Composition: 63.3% GOP, 36.7% DEM

If this holds (and assuming my memory isn't off), then there very well may be a huge shift in terms of the percentage of primary ballots pulled that are Democratic.

[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of today, 72,705 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia. Of those ballots and outstanding requests, the composition is such:

Votes	%	Party
35895	49.37	Republican
34128	46.94	Democratic
2682	3.69	Non-Partisan

Of the 72,705, there are 19,289 outstanding ABM ballots yet to be returned. The outstanding ballot composition is:

Votes	%	Party
9531	49.41	Republican
9054	46.94	Democratic
704	3.65	Non-Partisan

Kind of amazing to see statistically no difference between ballots cast and mail ballots outstanding; the Democratic percentage is even identical down to the hundredth!

[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of Tuesday, 99,173 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia:

Votes	%	Party
49633	50.05	Republican
46297	46.68	Democratic
3243	3.27	Non-Partisan

Of the 99,173, there are 20,531 outstanding ABM ballots yet to be returned. The outstanding ballot composition is:

Votes	%	Party
9754	47.51	Republican
9680	47.15	Democratic
1097	5.34	Non-Partisan

And comparisons to previous primary composition:

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[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of Wednesday, 111,728 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia:

Votes	%	Party
56284	50.37	Republican
51971	46.51	Democratic
3473	3.12	Non-Partisan

And comparisons to previous primary composition:

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[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of Thursday, 124,527 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia:

Votes	%	Party
63075	50.65	Republican
57754	46.37	Democratic
3698	2.98	Non-Partisan

And comparisons to previous primary composition:

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[Adam Griffin]

A D swing of 13 matches what we’ve seen elsewhere...

Not that primary results are all that predictive

For what it's worth, I'd be shocked if the final two-way tally including ED holds up anywhere near these figures (I could see 57/43 being realistic), but it's surprising me a bit how the numbers are getting more GOP-friendly with each day of early voting. That might reverse in the final week, but historically, the early vote tends to get more Democratic (at least based on demography; it's a stronger correlation in primaries than even party affiliation in GA) as the period progresses. Based on the simple D/R primary totals thus far, I'd actually bet on the ballots requested/cast thus far to be at least plurality-Democratic in terms of GE intent.

Then again, it may very well just be due to early voting becoming increasingly synonymous with voters of both parties and therefore becoming more proportional with each election...but if that is the case, then these numbers could be somewhat reflective of the final primary electorate. I also seem to remember the Ossoff ED/EV split being substantially larger than normal, so who knows.

[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of Friday, 139,866 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia:

Votes	%	Party
71436	51.07	Republican
64515	46.12	Democratic
3915	2.81	Non-Partisan

And comparisons to previous primary composition:

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[Adam Griffin]

Good article on the Democratic gubernatorial primary from Jim Galloway of the AJC: https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/the-shifting-etiquette-scorched-earth-democratic-campaign-for-governor/NPXD3GnWzrmqTi5b32rv6K/.  Includes these tidbits for the early vote tea leaf readers:

This is what I've been thinking might happen:

Even if they succeed at increasing black turnout significantly, there's another problem: suburban ATL voters. I don't think anybody is under the impression that the huge swings in the metro in 2016 came from black voters. Since the election, suburbia has only soured on Trump even more. It's very possible that hordes of white and non-white, non-black voters pour into the Democratic primary for the first time, cancelling out (and maybe even then some) any gains in black voters.

Until/unless proven otherwise, I remain highly skeptical that the presence of a black state-level candidate will dramatically increase black turnout or support...

...let's not forget that almost all of the (black) "low-hanging fruit" so to speak were activated/engaged in 2008 and 2012 (and those voters largely continued to participate in 2010 and 2014, at least proportionately speaking), and there will also likely be a surge of interest in voting among non-black Democrats, moderates and independents as well.

Just in the 6th alone, the amount of bombardment from the special election turned even low-propensity voters out; as such, if Democrats were able to activate them, then getting them to vote in a midterm primary is a very attainable goal seeing as how they're already stirred up (much like how black voters continued to participate in substantially larger numbers post-2008). It seems to be having an effect, along with the increased anti-Trump sentiment...and I imagine even among the lower-propensity voters in this CD, a huge portion are non-black.

I also have a friend who's working on the ground in the 7th, and he says there is a huge surge in Asian-American participation that is going to manifest in this contest. While he doesn't know for sure one way or another, his gut feeling is that they'll break heavily for Evans in the primary.

[Adam Griffin]

Well, I was going to fetch the registration numbers by race and by CD, but the new SoS spreadsheet format is F[INKS]D on multiple levels and I frankly don't have the patience to short through each precinct and each group by race and by gender and then rearrange them into a format that'll work. But I'll just note (and it has already been said) that population =/= voters, especially in the north ATL burbs. Places that are nominally majority-minority (that aren't fueled heavily by black electorates) might still be 70% white or more come primary day - and could even be majority-white in the Democratic primary.

I also have a friend who's working on the ground in the 7th, and he says there is a huge surge in Asian-American participation that is going to manifest in this contest. While he doesn't know for sure one way or another, his gut feeling is that they'll break heavily for Evans in the primary.

I assume this is due to the presence of David Kim and Ethan Pham in the Congressional race?  I was driving through Gwinnett this morning and was struck by the number of Kim signs.

Yep.

[Adam Griffin]

Isn’t the 7th CD less white than the 6th? I wonder if that could theoretically flip before the 6th.

In theory/assuming they were starting with the same infrastructure, yep. I actually had pegged the 7th as more opportune than the 6th for Dems prior to the special election last year. I'm betting that had the same circumstances unfolded in the 7th, a Democrat would have won.

However and at this point, the 6th has a ton of residual Democratic ground-game infrastructure spread throughout in the form of groups that mobilized on behalf of Ossoff, so I'd be surprised if the 7th could frog-leap the 6th now.

[Adam Griffin]

BTW, I went back and looked at racial composition of the 2014 primary; I'm wondering where I got the impression that the electorate was less black than it was (perhaps from presidential primaries, which tend to be <60% black)? Anyway, it was 65% black, 29% white and 6% other in 2014. This may have been at least partially due to a siphoning effect in more heavily-GOP counties; since there were no major contested races on the Democratic side, more Democrats opted to pull a GOP ballot to vote for the least crazy GE alternative in their local and statewide races.

Another tidbit I find interesting (and something I'll start including in my daily updates) is the percentage of ballots cast/requested relative to 2014's total vote: currently, it stands at 18% for Dems (64k so far; 353k in 2014). While it may have been different for the primary in '14 (don't want to mix-up figures again), usually, around half of the vote in a statewide contest is cast early. We've been seeing a steady stream of about 7k additional Dem voters per day over the past week, and early voting tends to pick up in the final week...but this seems low if anything.

If the original info in the article saying turnout was much higher was from last Wednesday (i.e. when there were only 20k votes), the situation may have changed drastically since then.

[Adam Griffin]

I know there's probably an answer somewhere else on the thread, but I'll ask anyway.

I read a lot of the 'old democratic' machine in Georgia is supporting Stacey Evans- is there any reason why they favour her? Abrams seems like a much better candidate based on what I've seen of the two.

Some of it is racial. However, it's important to remember that each segment of the Georgia Democratic apparatus has wildly different skewings. For instance, the legislative caucus is 80% black, while the state and county committee structures are closer to 50/50; the executive committee is majority-white. From what I can tell, though, the levels of support for Abrams/Evans among these three groups do not sync up with their racial compositions: in fact, Evans' strongest support may be coming from the blackest of those three groups.

Some of it is personal. I'm not close enough to the core of the state's Democratic politics on a regular enough basis to truly understand (nor motivated enough quite frankly to ask) the full story behind why so many people - male and female; white and black - who served with Abrams don't like her, but they don't. It's pretty shocking that the most recent Minority Leader is losing a majority of her caucus' support to a relative back-bencher.

Some of it is strategic. There are many people across the socioeconomic spectrum in the state party who simply don't believe that a black female can win statewide, when demographic groups who have objectively performed better in the past still haven't pulled it off. These kinds of battles are going to become even fiercer over the next few cycles, especially since it's not enough to win as a Democrat in GA: you gotta win by at least 2-3 points to clear the 50%+1 requirement and avoid a run-off (which is a guarantee loss for the Democrat).

[Adam Griffin]

Why is a runoff a guaranteed loss?

Low-turnout contests in heavily-minority jurisdictions tend to result in an over-representation of whites due to non-whites not showing up to the polls - and that's almost always true in GA.

Besides the 1992/2008 Senate run-offs and the fact that GA-6 showed the least improvement of the potentially competitive congressional races, look at the margins in the special elections for State House. Georgia is basically the only state (Connecticut is the other, but obvious conditions there are fueling the swing) where the average state legislative special election swing for the cycle has shifted to the GOP. There have actually been a couple of seats swing to the Democrats - in heavily-white areas. Elsewhere, the party has taken a pounding.

*Incomplete results; do not have data for Clinton margins in all special elections

[Adam Griffin]

Man, it's going to take forever for Georgia to be competitive on the state level. I see it being like Virginia, where it goes purple providentially way faster than locally because of the reliance on non-reliable voters (especially the younger people).

And that bears pointing out: a significant component of the unreliability of non-white voters in Georgia is actually fueled by age more than race. It's particularly a big problem in the suburban parts of Atlanta, and it's also why Latino and Asian voters are so poorly represented across the country (citizenship also compounds that, of course).

For example, when Republican Janice Van Ness (who literally spelled her name "JaNice" on the ballot, presumably so black voters would think she's black) won the special election for SD 43 a couple of years back, she pulled off a 1-point win in a district Obama carried both times by 40 points. She lost the race in 2016 by - you guessed it - 40 points. How'd it happen? The over-65 cohort in that SE Metro ATL area is still majority-white by a good margin; under-65 is majority-black...and a significant share of that black population is under the age of 40. Guess who votes in low-turnout elections and who doesn't?

While there is still some discrepancy between voting propensity between black and white regardless of age, a huge segment of it is due to non-white voters of all backgrounds being younger on average than white voters - and in some parts of the state, the discrepancy in age is massive.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ And FWIW, I think, to some degree, Democrats could break through at the state level (at least in statewide races) around the same time they break through in presidential contests - at least in terms of coming in first place. Obviously the presidential contest doesn't have the 50%+1 requirement (though there's nothing preventing it from being re-enacted; it actually was in effect for some time in the past century, though it never resulted in a presidential run-off).

I think a few pages back, you'll find my precinct-by-precinct GIF of Georgia presidential/gubernatorial results from 2002-2016. Anyway, if you look at it, GA basically oscillates between presidential and midterm in terms of which group (rural and white; urban and black) overperforms its baseline Democratic numbers. In midterms, Democrats tend to do better with white and rural voters than in presidential elections; in presidentials, Democrats tend to do better with black and urban voters than in midterms. You can clearly see various rural/white/Republican areas lighten up during midterms and urban/black/Democratic areas darken up during presidentials.

Unfortunately, there has never been a cycle where we could sync up both coalitions and get them to perform at their maximum. However, if urban and non-white support and turnout are maximized for a midterm, that added performance from white and rural voters might just be enough to tilt it. However, the latter group has not exactly demonstrated a propensity to "rebound" for statewide candidates who are black, so...it depends on who's the nominee as to whether that strategy can be pursued.


EDIT: here it is:

[Adam Griffin]

Whatever happened to Thurbert Baker he was state AG and won easily statewide 3x times. He ran and lost to Barnes in the primary in 2010, but he seems like he'd be a better candidate than Abrams right now.

He pretty much dropped off the map after his 2010 gubernatorial campaign. He probably would be a better choice electorally-speaking if only because he would negate one of the potential hold-back factors (i.e. he's a male), but I highly doubt he could win a contested primary: as I recall, he was a fairly conservative guy on a variety of issues. I imagine he'd be a good Governor, though.

He was able to win easily once in office, but it's worth pointing out that he was appointed by Zell and enjoyed de-facto incumbency on the ballot at a time (1998) when being a Democrat statewide still was a winning bet. I'd actually be curious as to how the campaign was waged that year: with far less media and campaigning, I wonder what percentage of white Democrats even knew he was black? Was his picture on campaign materials, etc? Even if most people knew, the 1990s were a special time in GA where - as far as Democratic voters were concerned - if you managed to get the nomination, you were likely going to get the votes irrespective of ideology or race.

Of course, Mike Thurmond (elected alongside Baker in 1998) enjoys the distinction of being the only black person to hold statewide row office in GA while being duly nominated and elected to that office without appointment...but his Senate campaign was a disaster due to the aforementioned racial bias combining with the nationalizing of a contest for federal office and the fact that it was just a bad campaign in general (would've had to been on the ground then to understand).

[Adam Griffin]

Update: as of Saturday, 154,781 AIP/ABM ballots have been cast or requested (via mail) in Georgia. A fairly substantial jump in the Democratic vote via Saturday voting (GOP advantage drops, from 4.95 points to 3.89 points):

Votes	%	Party
78256	50.56	Republican
72231	46.67	Democratic
4294	2.77	Non-Partisan

Percentage of '14 DEM Primary (353,103): 20.5%
Percentage of '14 GOP Primary (617,876): 12.6%


And comparisons to previous primary composition:

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[Adam Griffin]

Abrams rebuttal to Evans’ “attack” ad:

https://youtu.be/g9W7Lc3d5W0

I'm amazed to see this ad. Evans' whole campaign has been focused on HOPE - and Abrams is nibbling at the hook. It implies movement - and the desire to cut it off at the pass. Why else bother responding?

[Adam Griffin]

What chance do you guys give John Barrows run for Georgia Secretary of state? He's moderate and the reps had to redistrict him twice to take him down and his campaign seems to be going well here's an ad of his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4UwtQpDw0
also his list of endorsements is ridiculously long and impressive
http://barrowforgeorgia.com/content/endorsements
I'd say he has the best chance to be elected state wide of any of the georgia dems in the statewide races

Barrow obviously has the most name recognition. His opponents are known quantities to varying degrees within state Democratic circles (even I personally know RJ, and Dee was a South Dekalb rep), but obviously not on the same level. Nevertheless, I think Barrow'll drive up margins enough throughout his old stomping grounds (which is a huge swath of the state if you count all of his old CDs) to prevail and may walk with it in a landslide. If Barrow has a race on his hands, it'll only be because he lacks name recognition in the metro - but I'm skeptical that'll make a difference. He also has top-ballot status, which should pad him a bit.

I imagine Dawkins-Haigler will run up some margins in South Dekalb, and RJ will probably do very well in Rockdale, but they're feeding off of the same broader geographic area.

[Adam Griffin]

AJC: In early Dem balloting, black voters up 38% over ‘14, white voters up 68%

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This is (relatively) bad news for Abrams, but we still have another 4-5 days of early voting to go. In the past (at least for GEs), I'm fairly certain there has been an uptick in Democratic ballots (which in GA, more often than not, is indicative of black voters) in the final days - so things may change - but I'd be surprised that if the 61% figure remains where it is or drops, that it'll rise once ED voting is counted.

Just as an example, the early voting in the 2014 GE looked really good at the end of the period, as something like 33-34% of voters were black. In the end, about half early voted and half voted on ED, and the total black share of the electorate was 29%. If the trend doesn't break substantially, we could be looking at a black electorate around 55% - which is lower than I expected even in a status quo primary and/or with that potential uptick in non-black voters I hypothesized.