Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Adam Griffin]

Well, it looks like the SoS finally caught up somewhat in displayed counts over the past couple of hours (prior, there were only like 600k D votes).

DDHQ shows 829762, NYT shows 829283 & SoS shows 812710. With that update, Democrats officially take the SoS statewide primary lead:

DEM PPP: 812,710 (50.19%)
GOP PPP: 806,428 (49.81%)
TOTAL: 1,619,138

DEM SEN: 885,282 (51.35%)
GOP SEN: 838,630 (48.65%)
TOTAL: 1,723,912

With 104,000 votes difference between presidential and senatorial, those pre-cancellation Feb/Mar PPP ballots likely haven't been fully counted by all (or most) counties yet, which likely explains the margin difference between the two contests. Democrats might win the ballot count by >5 points once everything is counted.

[Adam Griffin]

Looks like one or more bigger, GOP counties' post-March mail ballots came in over the last 12 hours: 31667 new votes via SoS, with almost 60% of them being Republican.

In the PPP totals, there was a GOP gain of 18904 votes and a DEM gain of 12757 votes. Given the widening of the PPP/SEN totals (from a 104k difference to 108k), these almost certainly were not pre-cancellation ballots.

DEM PPP: 825,467 (50.00%)
GOP PPP: 825,332 (50.00%)
TOTAL: 1,650,799

DEM SEN: 899,795 (51.17%)
GOP SEN: 858,752 (48.83%)
TOTAL: 1,758,547

[Adam Griffin]

Another hour and a half, and a big Democratic dump. A total of 41,002 new votes in the presidential primary (31,238 D, 9,764 R) and 46,502 new votes in the senatorial primary (36,026 D, 10,476 R). PPP/SEN primary gap widens from 108k to 113k. They're still counting just post-March mail ballots, apparently.

DEM PPP: 856,705 (50.64%)
GOP PPP: 835,096 (49.36%)
TOTAL: 1,691,801

DEM SEN: 935,821 (51.84%)
GOP SEN: 869,228 (48.16%)
TOTAL: 1,805,049

[Adam Griffin]

Since last update:

8576 new PPP ballots:
+4788 D
+3788 R

8965 new SEN ballots:
+5026 D
+3939 R

DEM PPP: 861,493 (50.66%)
GOP PPP: 838,884 (49.34%)
TOTAL: 1,700,377

DEM SEN: 940,847 (51.87%)
GOP SEN: 873,167 (48.13%)
TOTAL: 1,814,014

[Adam Griffin]

OK, so the status shown via SoS is a bit confusing and counterintuitive, but I think I've deciphered what it means.

The counties in green (47) have completely finished counting all results: ED, AIP, post-March ABM and pre-March ABM.

The counties in purple (100) have completely finished counting all Election Day vote, but have not completed their mail ballot counts (or even potentially EV, though that's almost always counted first by counties).

The counties in yellow (10) apparently have not finished counting neither their Election Day ballots nor their mail ballots.

Not sure what's up with Jasper and Echols; glitches, presumably. It's also possible that pre-March ballots are not included for the "completely reported" status, as they were technically for a different primary/on a different day and so may be treated in a separate category by some/all counties when measuring this status.

This doesn't include provisional ballots, which cannot be finalized until after close of business on Friday.

[Adam Griffin]

I wonder if that Senate gap can grow to 100k

Definitely possible. If there are 100k outstanding ballots or more that lean 2:1 D, it'll happen. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still 100k Democratic ballots (excluding the PPP-only ones) left to count; may be closer to the 75k range at this point, though. The yellow counties above tell a broader story of where the bulk seems to be remaining.

[Adam Griffin]

Democrats ahead by just over 15% in GA-06 now. GA-07 has fallen to 58-42 D

Assuming I haven't made any mistakes...

Comparing last night's absentee spreadsheet to current SoS votes in Gwinnett, there are still another 60k ballots outstanding in Gwinnett.

Gwinnett Early Vote/Mail Ballots Accepted (via SoS Results):
DEM: 23558 (59.30%)
GOP: 16165 (40.70%)

Gwinnett Early Vote/Mail Ballots Accepted (via SoS Absentee Spreadsheet):
DEM: 61364 (60.41%)
GOP: 40209 (39.59%)

Which means, outstanding...

DEM: 37806 (61.12%)
GOP: 24044 (38.88%)

[Adam Griffin]

Yeah, Bourdeaux's got this.

[Adam Griffin]

Y'all think GA-07 will zoom to the left of GA-06 in November? Will Bourdeaux win by double digits?

Based on sheer demographics alone (even when excluding or factoring in post-'16 white GOP suburban flight), GA-7 is to the left of GA-6 and has been for several years. This was why I actually postulated in one of the 2018 GA GE polls pre-election on here somewhere that GA-7 could vote to the left of GA-6 in 2018; based on population alone (and even VAP), it should be voting more Democratic.

Of course that didn't happen - but the gulf in electoral difference (less than 1.5 points margin-wise) relative to polling wasn't anywhere nearly as large as many forecast, either. There are also many more non-citizen Latinos and Asians in 7 compared to 6 that negate a big chunk of that demographic difference.

Still, Latino and Asian turnout will ultimately be the key. As I pointed out a few days ago, the GA-7 D/R split in requested ballots was only 52/48 in favor of Ds (compared to 56/44 in GA-6) - which I thought was potentially concerning (but also not necessarily unusual, as lower-propensity voters tend to stick with ED voting as opposed to EV/ABM; less confusing for those not accustomed to long-term voting). Apparently, a lot more D voters returned their ballots in GA-7 than R voters relative to requests for us to have basically a 60% D mail electorate in 7, along with similar ratios across other forms of voting. I imagine a disproportionate share of Latino and Asian voters used ED voting - as they will in November - but there must have been an utter collapse in returned white GOP ballots/surge in white & black DEM ballots returned.

Anyway, yeah: could definitely happen, as I thought it was a possibility in 2018. It might even be more likely than not. Even if GA-6 in the aggregate is "anti-gun", I'm not convinced McBath was the best fit for the district. In some alternate universe, McBath and Bourdeaux get swapped between their respective districts and both probably won in 2018 (and in McBath's case, by a small amount more than in reality).

[Adam Griffin]

She's now at 49.81%.

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 905,687 (50.62%)
GOP PPP: 883,411 (49.38%)
TOTAL: 1,789,098

DEM SEN: 989,103 (51.80%)
GOP SEN: 920,379 (48.20%)
TOTAL: 1,909,482

PPP/SEN gap continues to grow - now at 120,384. Democrats slightly lost ground in percentage terms since my update from yesterday.

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 905,687 (50.62%)
GOP PPP: 883,411 (49.38%)
TOTAL: 1,789,098

DEM SEN: 989,103 (51.80%)
GOP SEN: 920,379 (48.20%)
TOTAL: 1,909,482

PPP/SEN gap continues to grow - now at 120,384. Democrats slightly lost ground in percentage terms since my update from yesterday.

Adam, do you have a guesstimate as to how many PPP-only early ballots may still be out?

Well, we know the maximum: there were just a tad over 300k ballots cast or requested prior to the cancellation; presumably a decent share (i.e. 20-25%) weren't returned as-is. Given there's a 120k vote gap between PPP and SEN total turnout, it seems that is the floor: in the aggregate, it's unlikely in a state like GA that many would skip the top contest "because it's over" or whatever and then proceed to vote downballot. Given the metro is where most of the population and incomplete returns tend to be, I doubt there are more than 150k outstanding statewide. I expect - given unreturned PPP pre-cancellation ballot likely counts - that the discrepancy between PPP and SEN will start narrowing now, presumably reaching parity (or even a slightly higher PPP total than SEN total) in the coming days. However, this extensive use of mail balloting changes things a lot in conjunction with the irregular nature of this year's primary, so I can't say with absolute confidence.

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 925,180 (50.77%)
GOP PPP: 897,146 (49.23%)
TOTAL: 1,822,326

DEM SEN: 1,010,150 (51.93%)
GOP SEN: 935,017 (48.07%)
TOTAL: 1,945,167

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k: now at 122,841. Maybe a bunch of people did skip the presidential contest, but a 6% undervote seems way too high. There still surely has to be tens of thousands of PPP-only mail ballots to be counted.

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 925,180 (50.77%)
GOP PPP: 897,146 (49.23%)
TOTAL: 1,822,326

DEM SEN: 1,010,150 (51.93%)
GOP SEN: 935,017 (48.07%)
TOTAL: 1,945,167

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k: now at 122,841. Maybe a bunch of people did skip the presidential contest, but a 6% undervote seems way too high. There still surely has to be tens of thousands of PPP-only mail ballots to be counted.

I thought the SOS site says none of the PPP-only vote has been added.  It's been counted, but not added.

Good to know! I guess they added that disclaimer yesterday. Of course when I looked a few minutes ago, I only read the first sentence!

[Adam Griffin]

I see that the front runner in the GA-14 R primary is an open QAnon supporter.  It's a 75% Trump district so the winner of the runoff will go to Congress.

here's the WaPo article btw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/georgia-republican-and-qanon-believer-favored-to-win-us-house-seat/2020/06/11/f52bc004-ac13-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html

This is my district. Don't make me get started on this. Her dumb Cobb County ass (who doesn't even live in the district; maybe she moved after announcing her campaign, I don't know) is going to lead to the NW Georgia district getting sliced into pieces in 2021 if nominated in the runoff. While there's no way a Democratic member of the US House wins an election with NW Georgia in it, I do at least appreciate all of the effort that NW GA GOP officials put into ensuring that the new 14th district (at the time) was a geographically compact, mostly (ugh Paulding) culturally-relevant district drawn here in 2011. I could be wrong, but I imagine if this cretin wins, the GAGOP at-large will split this area three ways to Sunday in redistricting to flush that turd down the electoral drain (as multi-millonaire Frank Reynolds once said).

[Adam Griffin]

skbl17 and Grif, how would you rate Senate District 17's race? Kelly Rose is shaping up to be a formidable candidate but Brian Strickland is Kemp/GOP's golden boy and clearly being groomed for bigger things down the line. They're going to go all out to protect him.

I'm leaving Covington (Newton County) and probably moving to McDonough, so will probably be voting in this race.

Maybe Tilt R? I'm reluctant to say it's a toss-up, even if the trajectory of the area suggests it very well could be. Trump won it by 15.7 in '16, while Kemp won it by 6.5 in '18. However, Strickland probably will continue to overperform the top of the ticket by a couple of points in addition.

So it was basically 10 points to the right of the state in '16 and 5 points to the right of it in '18. That's some major movement; obviously if the trends held, Democrats would be favored (or at minimum, the district would vote in line with the state - before factoring in any Strickland/incumbent advantage).

The real question in districts like these is one I've had since 2018: how much of Abrams' improvement was her basically pulling an Obama and cashing in demographic shifts earlier than expected (i.e. where Obama lost by 5 in '08 and it took eight years for another Democrat to replicate that margin), and how much is consistent demographic shift that will continue? Obviously SD-17 is close to ground zero for black suburban growth in the area over the past decade, but I don't know enough about the area's population shifts over the past 3-4 years at a granular level to say with absolute certainty.

[Adam Griffin]

Worth noting that Democrats currently lead Republicans 54-46 in the primary in SD-17 (measured by State Senate primary totals rather than PPP/SEN - might be wider by those metrics). Of course, this district is contained within 3 (more or less) reliable Democratic counties now and will naturally begin attracting a greater share of GOP voters pulling DEM primary ballots than the other way around. This has probably already happened in Rockdale, but is just starting to ramp up in Henry and Newton.

Because of this and perhaps due to other factors, I'm hesitant to assume that the large shifts in D/R ballot shares in the primary throughout suburban ATL are actually indicative of impending GE performance anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio. It's hard for me to believe that Democrats will be getting in the mid-to-high 60s in places like Gwinnett, Douglas and Henry come November, so I think some of this is indicative of variations in turnout competitiveness (Trump and Perdue were uncontested, Democrats had competitive races for both contests if but in name only) and indicative of a general realignment of the area's primary voting behaviors as counties flip from R to D.

Despite this, it's still a good sign. Obviously the district should be treated as a toss-up in every metric from a Democratic organizational standpoint (manpower, money; regardless of chances).

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 997,409 (52.00%)
GOP PPP: 920,608 (48.00%)
TOTAL: 1,918,017

DEM SEN: 1,088,763 (53.14%)
GOP SEN: 959,930 (46.86%)
TOTAL: 2,048,693

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 8k since yesterday: now at 130,676.


Somewhat related, this means that the SD 17 primary composition is now only about 1.2 points to the left of the statewide SEN primary composition (no new votes from SD 17 since yesterday).

[Adam Griffin]

If flipping the GA House requires winning seats that Republicans won by 10 points or less, that’d require a a multi point PV victory to happen, which seems really far fetched even in this climate, right?

Yes. It's also the case that most state legislators here do win crossover support from people who otherwise vote D/R upballot. It's quite probable that you'll see some metro Atlanta seats - quite a few - that vote for Biden and even Ossoff at the top of the ballot, but narrowly opt to reelect their Republican state rep or state senator.

Just as a reference, the state House vote overall was R+8.7 in 2018. For comparison, the gubernatorial race was R+1.5, and most other statewide races were R+2 to R+6.

With this in mind, Griff is right about the path Georgia is on. I do believe that Dems will be winning statewide races no later than 2022, but there will be significant lag in the General Assembly as Republicans will maintain small but comfortable majorities for a while, meaning that we'll be in for a decade of split government at least.

How many state house districts did Stacey Abrams win? And what is the tipping point district based on Abrams's performance?

78:

I think based on 2018 HD results alone, the tipping point district was one of the ones in Houston County. Not sure about which one based on Abrams' margins, though.

[Adam Griffin]

I assume the fact that Ga has an ungodly number of house seats and counties are somehow related.

Note: my memory may not be serving me on every detail here, so catch a grain or two of salt.

From the late 1800s until the 60s, Georgia had what's known as the County Unit System. Because rural counties received a new State House member each time a new county was created under the system, legislators began creating a slew of counties prior to the Great Depression to ensure rural interests remained represented in Atlanta and that urban, Republican and black voters could not take over (I want to say something like 30-35 new counties were created from the 1890s-1920s).

The County Unit System at its end had 121 "rural" counties, 30 "town" counties and 8 "urban" counties. Rural counties each had 2 votes/units, town counties 4 votes/units and urban counties 8 votes/units (i.e. statewide votes in primaries and the like were weighed in such a way that a handful of counties with a few thousand people could offset a county with tens or even hundreds of thousands). Each county had a minimum of 1 State House rep, which was only tangentially related to the broader CUS, but it's still a variable. Technically the system didn't exist for statewide general elections (only for primaries), but given the Democratic primary was the de-facto GE...

When the system was abolished in the 60s, the number of State House members was never scaled back. It was later constitutionally capped at 180.

[Adam Griffin]

Here's the current Senate primary turnout by county (map + spreadsheet):

2020 Senate Primary Turnout by County

[Adam Griffin]

FYI I found a couple of good explanations of the CUS et al:

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/counties-cities-neighborhoods/county-unit-system

https://www.wabe.org/why-ga-has-second-highest-number-counties-us/

[Adam Griffin]

DEM PPP: 1,024,800 (52.56%)
GOP PPP: 925,127 (47.44%)
TOTAL: 1,949,927

DEM SEN: 1,117,962 (53.68%)
GOP SEN: 964,792 (46.32%)
TOTAL: 2,082,754

PPP/SEN gap grew by another 2k since yesterday: now at 132,827.

Democrats now lead by over 5 points in the PPP total and over 7 points in the SEN total.


The SD 17 primary composition is now just 0.2 points to the left of the statewide SEN primary composition and just a tad over 2 points to the left of PPP primary (no new votes from SD 17). It may very well end up to the right of both once all votes are counted, which would make more sense based on recent voting behavior in the district.

[Adam Griffin]

Curious what the Georgia folks think--

Does Ossoff underperform Biden appreciably in any counties or neighborhoods? Conversely, does Biden underperform Ossoff anywhere in the state?

Historically, the biggest discrepancies for the down-ballot doing meaningfully better than the presidential candidate could be found in very rural areas (i.e. places where local Democrats could still win even when federal Democrats were getting walloped; where time had stood still) and presidential candidates doing better than the down-ballot in areas that mostly overlap with Ossoff's congressional bid (East Cobb, Milton, northern Dekalb, western Gwinnett, etc); rich, suburban, educated, white Atlanta.

There were dozens upon dozens of precincts in the current GA-6 and along its periphery in 2008 and 2012 where Obama won outright majorities - some of them in excess of 55% - where the average downballot Democrat received 40% or less. Ticket-splitting in the rich white northern ATL suburbs was quite common prior to 2016 (and even then, the differences between Clinton/Barksdale and Trump/Isakson in many of these places were extraordinary; Isakson outran Trump by 9 statewide, but by 15-25 in many of these same precincts). Given Ossoff's experience earning these people's votes, I'm not confident there'll be as big of an underperformance as in past years. Additionally, there is most certainly less ticket-splitting as more of these leaning Republicans and independents have found their way firmly into the Democratic Party over the past few years. He might actually even match or outperform Biden here given these factors, which would be a first.

Biden will obviously do better than Ossoff in precincts and places where there is unusually high drop-off. This will be in places where larger than average Latino/Asian populations exist. Expect Biden to dramatically outrun Ossoff in select Gwinnett, Hall and Whitfield precincts in particular, with maybe some (smaller) drop-off in more Asian areas in Forsyth and the like. In many majority-Latino precincts in 2016, there was anywhere from 15-25% raw vote difference between Clinton and Barksdale (with no significant raw vote increase for Isakson); these Latino voters basically showed up, voted for Clinton, and skipped the rest of the ballot.

Given both are white and both are male (a first for the two top Democrats in statewide GA elections since 2006*), major differences in vote share outside of the aforementioned areas are unlikely unless unique local factors are applicable in select areas. I don't really expect Ossoff to outperform Biden much of anywhere except possibly where I mentioned in the second paragraph.

* actually, maybe not, depending on Warnock's ballot placement - though that is a special election

[Adam Griffin]

Per the AJC, absentee ballot applications will not be mailed for the November general election. Instead, an "online portal" will be set up to allow voters to order an absentee ballot.

And Raffensperger said he won’t send absentee ballot request forms to 6.9 million Georgia voters again, as he did in the primary. Instead, he’ll create a website where voters can request absentee ballots themselves.

Honestly, this is even better: no stupid postage or envelope required for application return.

I really don't get why the GOP (both Kemp and now Raffensperger) are so hell-bent on making voting easy? First the MVP system, then AVR, and now all of this. How many states (even D-controlled ones) mailed ballot applications to voters for even the primary?