Georgia's Very Own Megathread! (v2)

[Scottholes 2.0]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but Oprah is coming to Georgia to campaign with Stacey Abrams! Woot! Woot!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/oprah-campaign-democrat-stacey-abrams-georgia-n929411

[Calthrina950]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but Oprah is coming to Georgia to campaign with Stacey Abrams! Woot! Woot!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/oprah-campaign-democrat-stacey-abrams-georgia-n929411

I wonder how much of an effect that will have. Oprah is very popular with minority voters and with women, especially white women. So she might be able to push some support to Abrams, like she did with Obama back in 2008.

[ON Progressive]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but Oprah is coming to Georgia to campaign with Stacey Abrams! Woot! Woot!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/oprah-campaign-democrat-stacey-abrams-georgia-n929411

I wonder how much of an effect that will have. Oprah is very popular with minority voters and with women, especially white women. So she might be able to push some support to Abrams, like she did with Obama back in 2008.

Well, considering she is going to knock on doors, she might cause some heart attacks while canvassing.

[Calthrina950]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but Oprah is coming to Georgia to campaign with Stacey Abrams! Woot! Woot!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/oprah-campaign-democrat-stacey-abrams-georgia-n929411

I wonder how much of an effect that will have. Oprah is very popular with minority voters and with women, especially white women. So she might be able to push some support to Abrams, like she did with Obama back in 2008.

Well, considering she is going to knock on doors, she might cause some heart attacks while canvassing.

That is true. And for the record, I do support Abrams for Governor, in spite of my belief that she will fall short in this race. She would be a far better Governor than Kemp, who seems to rely on fear tactics and has a questionable record as Secretary of State. Moreover, her victory would be historic for both Georgia and the U.S. (by becoming the first black female governor in the country).

[ON Progressive]

Today's demographics (154k voted):
https://twitter.com/gtryan/status/1057844660931047424

Also, 65k (over 4 in 10) of those 154k voters didn't vote in 2014.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I hope 2014 non-voters end up as a plurality of the EV electorate. It's getting really close.

[Adam Griffin]

According to Georgia Votes, an additional 155,924 valid votes were cast yesterday (Wednesday); the accepted ballot total stands at 1,662,434 votes: 65.17% of total 2014 turnout. By comparison, around 88,000 people voted on this day in 2014.

Early vote totals are 138% higher than at this point in 2014 (down from 147% Tuesday).

No racial shifts of significance in total figures Wednesday. The electorate that voted Wednesday was 56% white, 30% black and 14% other (was 58/29/13 on Tuesday). Wednesday's electorate was 56% female, compared to 56% on Tuesday. 

Currently, 17.5% of voters are under the age of 40 (up from 17.0% on Tuesday). On Wednesday, 24% of all voters were under 40 (compared to 21% on Tuesday).

Code:

White	967522	58.2% (-0.2)
Black	498087	30.0% (+0.1)
Latino	22817         1.4% (+0.1)
Asian	21709         1.3% (0.0)
Other	152299       9.2% (+0.1)

Female	909404	54.7% (+0.1)
Male		710017	42.7% (-0.2)
Unknown	43013       2.6% (+0.1)

18-29	131810	7.9%   (+0.2)
30-39	160290	9.6%   (+0.3)
40-49       242705	14.6%  (+0.3)
50-64       536714	32.3%  (-0.1)
65+         549156      33.0%  (-1.0)
Unknown	 41759      2.5%    (0.0)

[LimoLiberal]

According to Georgia Votes, an additional 155,924 valid votes were cast yesterday (Wednesday); the accepted ballot total stands at 1,662,434 votes: 65.17% of total 2014 turnout. By comparison, around 88,000 people voted on this day in 2014.

Early vote totals are 138% higher than at this point in 2014 (down from 147% Tuesday).

No racial shifts of significance in total figures Wednesday. The electorate that voted Wednesday was 56% white, 30% black and 14% other (was 58/29/13 on Tuesday). Wednesday's electorate was 56% female, compared to 56% on Tuesday. 

Currently, 17.5% of voters are under the age of 40 (up from 17.0% on Tuesday). On Wednesday, 24% of all voters were under 40 (compared to 21% on Tuesday).

Code:

White	967522	58.2% (-0.2)
Black	498087	30.0% (+0.1)
Latino	22817         1.4% (+0.1)
Asian	21709         1.3% (0.0)
Other	152299       9.2% (+0.1)

Female	909404	54.7% (+0.1)
Male		710017	42.7% (-0.2)
Unknown	43013       2.6% (+0.1)

18-29	131810	7.9%   (+0.2)
30-39	160290	9.6%   (+0.3)
40-49       242705	14.6%  (+0.3)
50-64       536714	32.3%  (-0.1)
65+         549156      33.0%  (-1.0)
Unknown	 41759      2.5%    (0.0)

I take it there will be no big minority surge, unless these next few days are drastically different?

[Adam Griffin]

I take it there will be no big minority surge, unless these next few days are drastically different?

The trends certainly aren't playing out in the final week like 2014 (or 2016, for that matter). Both black and white voters are underperforming their final share of the EV compared to 2014 (and both by 3 points; 61% -> 58% & 33% -> 30%), with the "other" category being more than twice as large as 4 years ago. The question as I pondered above earlier today is who really are these "others".

Is it possible AAs, Latinos, Asians, and liberal whites may turn out in the last few days as well as on Election Day?

Latinos in particular have a real bad habit of waiting to vote until Election Day (in large part because young people have the same bad habit) and if I had to guess, I'd say Asians are probably similar in that regard. Black voters have never seen their share of the electorate increase from Election Day voting since EV became relatively common. We've only got 2 days to go so if there's going to be a huge surge it's now or never. If it was following past trends, there should already be evidence of a big shift (though with twice as many people early voting per day at this point, the effects even if intact might be smaller). Otherwise, Abrams is going to have to have one hell of a strategy to get all of these low-propensity voters to show up on Election Day.

[Adam Griffin]

Early Vote Records in GA:
2016: 2,398,674
2008: 2,129,316
2012: 1,918,931
2018: 1,662,434 (as of 10/31)

We're definitely going to break 2012's EV totals and quite possibly could break 2008's as well (if we have two final 200k days + get 60k more returned mail ballots). The end result is increasingly looking like one where the EV total in this election will be comparable to 80% or more of all votes cast in the 2014 election (~2,550,000).

[QAnonKelly]

The judge denied Kemp a stay on the absentee ballot case  yesterday

[GeorgiaModerate]

Playing around with data from http://georgiavotes.com/ as of this morning.  Here are the 20 largest counties with their population, their rank of how Democratic they are among counties (1 is most D, 159 is most R), and their turnout increase compared to the same point in 2014.  I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this.

Rank   County   Pop (K)   D rank   Turnout increase
1   Fulton   1041   7   176%
2   Gwinnett   920   36   209%
3   Cobb   756   39   94%
4   DeKalb   753   2   116%
5   Chatham   291   19   88%
6   Clayton   285   1   116%
7   Cherokee   248   126   115%
8   Forsyth   228   129   149%
9   Henry   226   28   117%
10   Richmond   202   9   109%
11   Hall   199   130   107%
12   Muscogee   194   15   122%
13   Paulding   159   100   151%
14   Houston   153   53   122%
15   Bibb   153   16   144%
16   Columbia   152   103   161%
17   Douglas   144   24   104%
18   Coweta   143   105   177%
19   Clarke   127   6   156%
20   Carroll   118   98   163%

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

[Adam Griffin]

Changes (10/29 - 10/31)

White to Black: Stewart
Black to White: Wilkinson

[Inmate Trump]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

So we're kinda f**ked, in a way?

Seriously, wtf is wrong with my state?

[GeorgiaModerate]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

So we're kinda f**ked, in a way?

Seriously, wtf is wrong with my state?

1. Voting isn't over.

2. Abrams is undoubtedly getting some crossover votes, or she wouldn't be in a dead heat in the polls.

3. According to this analysis of the NYT/Upshot polls, it looks like independents are breaking 2:1 toward Democrats this year (obviously, individual states will vary).

[Rookie Yinzer]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

So we're kinda f**ked, in a way?

Seriously, wtf is wrong with my state?

No. Those stats are if the votes were breaking the same way they did in 2014. Abrams is undoubtedly outrunning Carter in Cobb, Gwinnett, Henry, and other places. We also have no idea what effect her canvass operation has had on Blacks, Latinos, and white Democrats in rural Georgia. 2018 is not 2014. Abrams is not Carter. We will see in 5 days.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Related to above, I'm back at looking at the EV totals by county and comparing them to the final electorate from 2014. Essentially, I took each county's EV totals and stacked them against Deal/Carter's performance, to calculate what the statewide margin would be if every county's voters supported Abrams and/or Kemp by the same margins as Deal and/or Carter. It's not great:

2014: 52.75% Deal, 44.89% Carter (Deal +7.86)
2018: 53.22% Kemp, 44.42% Abrams (Kemp +8.80)

Just to be clear: this isn't saying that Kemp is ahead by 9 right now, or that he would even win among all voters by the same margin. What it is saying is that historically GOP counties and/or constituencies are actually slightly more represented right now in the 2018 EV than they were among all votes from 2014. In essence, it means likely GOP territory is outpacing DEM territory in early vote relative to what we'd expect in a general election overall, irrespective of the figures. That's not good.

Now, Abrams could very well be doing better in even heavily-GOP counties, there could be more Democrats and non-white voters turning out in otherwise hostile counties for Democrats, Abrams could certainly be over-performing compared to Carter in a variety of heavily-populated counties that Deal won (particularly in metro ATL), and so forth. Nevertheless, what this shows is that right now, base Democratic areas are slacking relative to base GOP areas, which isn't exactly a natural indicator of success.

So we're kinda f**ked, in a way?

Seriously, wtf is wrong with my state?

The best way to look at the above is as a measurement of each county's share of the statewide EV relative to its share of the total vote four years ago. Essentially, what it's showing is that areas that were more favorable to Deal are slightly over-represented in the EV electorate compared to their vote share in 2014.

It's not indicative of the final result per se, but...considering that Democrats are supposed to do better in early vote compared to the total vote (and given that you'd expect that performance first and foremost to come from base Democratic counties), it's not great to see this.

Essentially, it tells us that Carter/Clinton counties have seen a smaller increase in turnout compared to 2014 than Deal/Trump counties. It's not an earth-shattering difference, but I honestly expected the margin to be considerably narrower than 2014 when I started compiling it, and not larger. However, as I pointed out, she is likely doing much better in counties like Cobb and Gwinnett (where Deal won by 15 points) at minimum.

[Adam Griffin]

I should also point out that given the weirdness of some of the turnout patterns and trends so far, anything could happen. Perhaps more GOP counties are dumping much larger shares of their vote early on, and will have fewer people show up on Election Day; perhaps Democratic counties where there are large numbers of first-time registrants are going to wait until Election Day to vote (which is not uncommon).

However, that also requires jumping through more hoops to justify the situation than the simplicity of the situation suggests. Occam's razor and all that. Generally, strong Democratic campaigns do everything they can to bank those targeted voters ASAP, and Abrams' campaign has been strong...which is exactly why I'm concerned.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Hasn’t the narrative from the very beginning been that  Abrams couldn’t win with just going all in on Metro Atlanta?  She has invested in field and has a paid canvass operation throughout the state. Why wouldn’t there be higher turnout in GOP counties? She’s contesting these areas. Could it be racist Bubbas and Beckies? Yes. But it could also be voters that have never been thoughtfully engaged in a midterm. Blacks, Latinos, and white Democrats live in every county in this state.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Hasn’t the narrative from the very beginning been that  Abrams couldn’t win with just going all in on Metro Atlanta?  She has invested in field and has a paid canvass operation throughout the state. Why wouldn’t there be higher turnout in GOP counties? She’s contesting these areas. Could it be racist Bubbas and Beckies? Yes. But it could also be voters that have never been thoughtfully engaged in a midterm. Blacks, Latinos, and white Democrats live in every county in this state.

Will AAs have a high % of vote on election day?

[Virginiá]

^ The polls do give me hope to a degree, but the AA share of the early vote being lower than it should be isn't exactly comforting.

I'm curious - are African Americans turning out like previous elections but representing a lesser share of the electorate because other groups are turning out in higher numbers? Or are African Americans making up a proportionately smaller % of the early vote compared to previous elections?

(apologies if this is clearly addressed elsewhere in the thread - trying to multitask here and don't have time to skim)

[Adam Griffin]

Hasn’t the narrative from the very beginning been that  Abrams couldn’t win with just going all in on Metro Atlanta?  She has invested in field and has a paid canvass operation throughout the state. Why wouldn’t there be higher turnout in GOP counties? She’s contesting these areas. Could it be racist Bubbas and Beckies? Yes. But it could also be voters that have never been thoughtfully engaged in a midterm. Blacks, Latinos, and white Democrats live in every county in this state.

This is true - but as we also know, it's much easier to organize in denser areas; field ops have greater effect there when doing on-the-ground work, all things equal. There are also greater concentrations of the types of voters Abrams has targeted (younger voters, minority voters, those who don't vote regularly, those who have never voted before, etc) in those denser areas. One would expect her message to resonate at least as strongly in urban and/or Democratic areas, and therefore, produce at least proportionally just as many voters when compared to more rural areas (which, depending on the exact area, have fewer low-propensity voters per capita and who are harder to reach and mobilize).

It's not just that there's higher turnout in both Democratic and Republican counties: it's that the turnout is even higher in rural and/or Republican areas. That, to me, smacks of Abrams potentially mobilizing her voters all over the state, but also that the GOP is mobilizing their rural base on top of that.

It's not an attack on her; she has done more to invest in mobilizing the entire state than any Democrat in my lifetime. However, her doing everything right in that regard doesn't necessarily shield her from a visceral reaction among those who are threatened by who and what she represents.

I may try to break this comparison down by various regions and see if there are any varying trends between areas.

[Adam Griffin]

^ The polls do give me hope to a degree, but the AA share of the early vote being lower than it should be isn't exactly comforting.

I'm curious - are African Americans turning out like previous elections but representing a lesser share of the electorate because other groups are turning out in higher numbers? Or are African Americans making up a proportionately smaller % of the early vote compared to previous elections?

(apologies if this is clearly addressed elsewhere in the thread - trying to multitask here and don't have time to skim)

In raw (approximate) numbers:

• Blacks equivalent to 67% of their total 2014 turnout have voted so far (498,000/740,000)
• Whites equivalent to 59% of their total 2014 turnout have voted so far (967,000/1,630,000)
• "Others" equivalent to 110% of their total 2014 turnout have voted so far (196,000/179,000)

Whites aren't really even flooding the polls yet; non-whites compared to 2014 raw totals are voting in higher numbers. Of course, we'd almost certainly see some skewing like that in a state that's diversifying quite rapidly, so it's not inherently as bad as it might appear; after all, that's why the formal white share of the vote is lower than at the end of early voting 2014...but both white and black shares are lower by the same amount (61% white in 2014 -> 58% white in 2018; 33% black in 2014 -> 30% black in 2018).

[Gass3268]

CNN is giving Oprah the 2015/2016 Trump treatment. AKA, speech shown in full:

https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/1058036167936000001

Edit: MSNBC too