Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Adam Griffin]

But alas, even though I've always been worried about the effects that such a campaign focus/method/style means for my own area, where the lack of extensive persuasion could really end up hurting us is in the suburbs. I don't trust those fickle suburbanites to stick with us after just one election, and they have been the bane of Democrats' existence since dirt was formed. I wager they're just looking for a reason to go back to the GOP.

[Rookie Yinzer]

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!

[Adam Griffin]

and I'm in one of the more friendly and civilized parts of the state.

Haha, I meant in this part of the state; certainly not one of the most friendly or civilized statewide!

[junior chįmp]

The clown GOP back at it with the same worn out,tired, overused culture war drivel:

New GOP line: Abrams will turn Georgia ‘into the next California

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[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The clown GOP back at it with the same worn out,tired, overused culture war drivel:

New GOP line: Abrams will turn Georgia ‘into the next California

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[Devout Centrist]

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The devil is in the details. I think Abrams will gain some of these voters back by default, namely because of less influence from third parties and the lack of President Trump on the ballot. The lion share that remains is tricky. It's a matter of getting her message to resonant with Obama/Trump and Obama/Third Party voters. I have a feeling that a good majority of these voters (or those in this group that vote) will back Abrams on November 6th.

If these voters supported Obama back in 2012, that's a pretty good indication that they're not necessarily supporters of local Republicans. I'd have to look at the correlation between Obama '12 + Carter '14, but my gut prediction is that it's a fairly high correlation. I know it sounds rather cheap to posit that Clinton was the sole cause for the defections. After all, that would make the rather hefty assumption that these voters will vote for local and statewide Democrats. But it is something to consider. It's hard to predict the exact impact that Clinton's underperformance in certain areas will have on Georgia Democrats in 2018...at least, that's what I think. I could be completely wrong.

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That's something to consider, too. That actually makes me quite curious. What were some of the differences you've seen?

[Adam Griffin]

[snip]

Just woke up so I'm not ready to analyze, but I went back and look at some of the comparison maps I made after the 2014 election. Looks like the Nunn underperformance was largely concentrated to CDs 8 & 14 (Perdue probably had some home-turf advantage in 8, and Carter had some ancestral home turf in 14, for what it's worth). At the county level, generally, there wasn't anywhere where Nunn did more than 2 points better than Carter.





Some other maps I thought might be relevant to the discussion from there:

(White Vote Performance; Who Did Better)

[Devout Centrist]

[snip]

[snip]

This looks fantastic, thanks Griffin!

[Zaybay]

[snip]

[snip]

This looks fantastic, thanks Griffin!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

[snip]

[snip]

This looks fantastic, thanks Griffin!

[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!

[Virginiá]

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?

It is pretty amazing how consistently strong the Democrat over-performance in special elections has been. I don't think it was like that in previous cycles, although this could be in part due to increased polarization but also the unique nature of Trump's presidency and the fire it is lighting under the left's collective butts.

However, and while I'm not 100% on the stats, I think Georgia was not a particularly bright spot for Democrats in special elections. They did well in a legislative election or two, but others showed no remarkable trends. And we all know what went down in GA-06 - Ossoff held the line with 2016 numbers more or less, but that was obviously not enough. Georgia just isn't swingy enough to match Midwest performances, so I'm not entirely sure how this Gov race will play out. I do know that it's tough to balance all of this, and I'm not confident in saying that one way is better than another. I will say that it usually takes a massive investment and herculean efforts to actually bring out hoards of new voters - something many base campaigns tend to fall short of, so at the very least its nice to see that she is going all-in.

[Adam Griffin]

1) You're fine with the fact that Clinton did substantially worse than both Carter and Obama in a large portion of the state, with said under-performance yet to be baked into a midterm

One more map that might illustrate this point is a simple comparison of vote share between Carter and Clinton. This is among all voters (unlike the Carter-Obama comparison) and compares the percentage of the vote each candidate received.

In other words, this isn't a swing map of margins; if Clinton received 24% and Carter received 31%, then that'd be a 7 percentage-point advantage to Carter on the map. More or less, you can double the figures shown in the map to get an approximate swing in margin - though given bigger third-party support in 2016, it's not an exact situation.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Just got a very quick robopoll from an Atlanta number, asking how likely I was to vote, who I was voting for in the Governor's race, and my age group and gender. 

(If it seems like I get polled a lot, it's probably because I (a) have a landline, and (b) usually don't mind answering it even from unfamiliar numbers.)

[Rookie Yinzer]

New Abrams video:

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

Her campaign is doing a faith outreach summits this week throughout South and Central Georgia.

[GeorgiaModerate]

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[Adam Griffin]

I was walking through the living room last night and heard some kind of campaign commercial. Practically everything we hear here is TN Senate and Governor campaigns, so I wasn't paying much attention...but something caught my ear. Unfortunately, people were yakking in there, but I gathered that it was an attack ad against Brian Kemp over massage parlors and it sounded really nasty (great job!).

So apparently there are two of them? I can't find the first one (which from the looks of it was pretty cheesy), but here's the other one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXpgFxVsyU
https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/kemp-demands-stations-pull-attack-ads/aOOMsG7Y0cmcGOOnMHvUwN/

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[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Just wanted to point out the genius of it in that most of it is worded just vaguely enough to make you think Kemp was personally the one doing the molestin' (especially near the beginning)

[GeorgiaModerate]

Judge says no paper ballots for this year

[Virginiá]

Judge says no paper ballots for this year

Was a long shot anyway. Even though Virginia managed to do it, it's probably too late for GA to considering they dragged their feet in court.

FWIW the judge didn't completely blow it off, so GA should be upgrading before the 2020 election.

[Blair]

I was walking through the living room last night and heard some kind of campaign commercial. Practically everything we hear here is TN Senate and Governor campaigns, so I wasn't paying much attention...but something caught my ear. Unfortunately, people were yakking in there, but I gathered that it was an attack ad against Brian Kemp over massage parlors and it sounded really nasty (great job!).

So apparently there are two of them? I can't find the first one (which from the looks of it was pretty cheesy), but here's the other one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXpgFxVsyU
https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/kemp-demands-stations-pull-attack-ads/aOOMsG7Y0cmcGOOnMHvUwN/

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Unless I'm having a senior moment, the attack ad has 500K views which is insane for a political ad, especially as I haven't seen any coverage of it (where as Kander/Beto/McGrath got picked up on my UK heavy twitter)

[windjammer]

I was walking through the living room last night and heard some kind of campaign commercial. Practically everything we hear here is TN Senate and Governor campaigns, so I wasn't paying much attention...but something caught my ear. Unfortunately, people were yakking in there, but I gathered that it was an attack ad against Brian Kemp over massage parlors and it sounded really nasty (great job!).

So apparently there are two of them? I can't find the first one (which from the looks of it was pretty cheesy), but here's the other one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXpgFxVsyU
https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/kemp-demands-stations-pull-attack-ads/aOOMsG7Y0cmcGOOnMHvUwN/

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OMG what a powerful ad

[libertpaulian]

New Abrams video:

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

Her campaign is doing a faith outreach summits this week throughout South and Central Georgia.

I see a lot of Presidential material in her.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I was walking through the living room last night and heard some kind of campaign commercial. Practically everything we hear here is TN Senate and Governor campaigns, so I wasn't paying much attention...but something caught my ear. Unfortunately, people were yakking in there, but I gathered that it was an attack ad against Brian Kemp over massage parlors and it sounded really nasty (great job!).

So apparently there are two of them? I can't find the first one (which from the looks of it was pretty cheesy), but here's the other one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXpgFxVsyU
https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/kemp-demands-stations-pull-attack-ads/aOOMsG7Y0cmcGOOnMHvUwN/

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Love to see Dems being willing to play dirty for once. It's only fair given what Republicans have done for the past 50 years.