Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[skbl17]

I don’t feel like doing the math so I hope someone has already done this but if you remove Metro Atlanta how many points did Abrams lose by?

This graphic made me think about that. I find it interesting that Tomlinson didn’t disclose how she performed outside of the Metro. Every Democrat will lose this way but I guess she’s saying she’ll lose by less.

Depends on what is meant by "metro Atlanta". @InsaneKaine on Twitter crunched the numbers for the Census Bureau-defined version of metro Atlanta:

https://twitter.com/InsaneKaine/status/1161435437354950657

So if we subtract those numbers from the statewide total, I get these numbers for the "non-Metro" result:

- Kemp (R): 942,256 (61.36% of the two-party vote)
- Abrams (D): 593,251 (38.64%)

So the answer, as it turns out, is "pretty badly": Kemp won the non-Metro vote by nearly 23 points.

[QAnonKelly]

I don’t feel like doing the math so I hope someone has already done this but if you remove Metro Atlanta how many points did Abrams lose by?

This graphic made me think about that. I find it interesting that Tomlinson didn’t disclose how she performed outside of the Metro. Every Democrat will lose this way but I guess she’s saying she’ll lose by less.

Depends on what is meant by "metro Atlanta". @InsaneKaine on Twitter crunched the numbers for the Census Bureau-defined version of metro Atlanta:

https://twitter.com/InsaneKaine/status/1161435437354950657

So if we subtract those numbers from the statewide total, I get these numbers for the "non-Metro" result:

- Kemp (R): 942,256 (61.36% of the two-party vote)
- Abrams (D): 593,251 (38.64%)

So the answer, as it turns out, is "pretty badly": Kemp won the non-Metro vote by nearly 23 points.

Geez, wonder what that looks like if you subtract the rural black counties.

[Adam Griffin]

If you take the ATL metro and Columbus, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Albany and Athens out of the statewide totals, then Abrams loses by 39 points:

Kemp    809,487 (69.41%)
Abrams 356,726 (30.59%)

Granted, that's only 30% of the statewide vote, but those margins make it very meaningful.

Geez, wonder what that looks like if you subtract the rural black counties.

Those counties have relatively few people in them and many were very close to 50/50, with Liberty, Hancock and Macon Counties being the only 3 that netted Abrams more than 1,000 votes. However, If you take out all of the remaining Abrams counties (73k votes total; 57-43 Abrams) from the above numbers, then Kemp's margin expands by another 3.5 points (42-point win):

Kemp    777,708 (71.17%)
Abrams 315,040 (28.83%)

[free my dawg]

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1262722196314763264

Remember that time when I got a post deleted on here for saying Heil Kemp? You know, because Brian Kemp does not fundamentally believe in democracy?

[Roronoa D. Law]

What is Kemp doing? He's following the same path as McCrory and we all know had that ended.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Kemp makes my f-cking blood boil.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1262722196314763264

Remember that time when I got a post deleted on here for saying Heil Kemp? You know, because Brian Kemp does not fundamentally believe in democracy?

This is not necessary helpful to Republicans.

The seat would be up again in 2022, at which point Georgia would be less Republican/more Democratic.

[QAnonKelly]

I’m really starting to not want Abrams to run again and this is part of it. He’s horrendous but I think it’s just gonna turn into a retread.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I’m really starting to not want Abrams to run again and this is part of it. He’s horrendous but I think it’s just gonna turn into a retread.

I hope Mayor Bottoms runs.

[Lognog]

What is Kemp doing? He's following the same path as McCrory and we all know had that ended.

The problem is we need a good candidate like a Roy Cooper to go against him, and if there is one thing this year has proved, dems have no bench there

[Badger]

Might be a stupid question, but why is Chattahoochee County competitive when it's not a major urban center, has no colleges, and it was only 18.8% black as of the 2010 census? How did Obama win it in 2008 and barely lose it in 2012?

Someone else on discord and I were talking about this 2 weeks ago.
It's a military base county.

Turns out that's not the explanation - the explanation is even weirder: as of the 2010 census, millennials made up 59.7% of the population of the county, the highest of any county in the country.

Again military base lol- which is mostly young men.

Well, yes and no.

There are over 100,000 people working, training and/or living in Fort Benning. That's a huge presence - yet Chattahoochee County only put up around 1,500 votes in 2016. The vast majority of Chattahoochee County (and like half of Muscogee County) land is Fort Benning. The area in red is the part of Chattahoochee where typical residents can be found (currently around 10,000).



The rest - to my knowledge - are not casting votes in Chattahoochee County unless they work on-base and live in the civilian segment of Chattahoochee as well (i.e. like any normal resident). Even among military turnout, something like 1% of Fort Benning would be unimaginable. Of course, the vast majority are either commuting in from other counties to work or are still registered in their home jurisdictions from pre-deployment/training.

A certain segment of young servicemembers do actually register to vote in the county (whether it be on-base or they live in the non-base segment of the county). In 2016, 18-29 year-olds made up 27% of registered voters (compared to 17% of votes), while 55 and up was 20% of RVs (despite being 37% of voters).

So basically, a large chunk of people voting in Chattahoochee are non-military (or at least "traditional residents", living off-base, owning/renting homes, etc) - but there's also a small number of servicemembers who are registered to vote (and who actually do vote) in the county.

However, the military presence in voting isn't actually that big of a factor here - look at how 18-29s were only 17% of the electorate, as opposed to like 18% nationally. You might be able to argue that the older servicemembers living here are more D than their native Chattahoochee cohorts, but that's a different discussion entirely.

All very interesting, Adam. Great research as always.

However, that still leaves open the question as to why Chattahoochee county is so purple when it's demographics would otherwise indicate it should be solidly Republican?

[QAnonKelly]

What is Kemp doing? He's following the same path as McCrory and we all know had that ended.

The problem is we need a good candidate like a Roy Cooper to go against him, and if there is one thing this year has proved, dems have no bench there

I don’t think there’s necessarily a bench problem, I just think most of the state legislature talent is still pretty young and none of them wants to make the jump to run for the senate because it sucks.

[skbl17]

This is why proofreading is important!

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1265716039477755906

[Rookie Yinzer]

How many Dem ballots have been returned? How has IPEV been?

[QAnonKelly]

Seems like the "hacking" was what we all knew the whole time.

[skbl17]

General Assembly session to resume June 15.

[skbl17]

212488   69.28% Democratic
91623      29.87% Republican
1625        0.53% Non-Partisan
968          0.32% Unknown

RIP Democrats having any advantage in the primary:

As of 4/21, 653,211 ballots have been cast or requested for the June presidential primary. This appears to exclude the ~350,000 ballots cast prior to the cancellation/merger of the March presidential & May state primaries, which means some/many of these individuals will be duplicates (i.e. individuals who voted in the pres primary before the merger will get to vote again separately for the state contests). As one example, I am on the new state list for my June ballot, but not for my March ballot. Partisan breakdown of ballot requests is:

364464   55.80% Republican
268538    41.11% Democratic
19272      2.95% Non-Partisan
937          0.14% Unknown

According to Georgia Votes, it seems like the two-party race with regards to VBM application ballot requests and returned ballots has significantly tightened, with Dems leading in applications and the GOP maintaining a small lead in returned ballots:

Applied for absentee ballot:
- Dem: 928,719 (49.4%)
- GOP: 884,108 (47%)
- Non-partisan: 67,082 (3.6%)

Returned and accepted absentee ballots:
- GOP: 601,620 (49.4%)
- Dem: 592,680 (48.7%)
- Non-partisan: 21,676 (1.8%)

Will be interesting to see if Dems can take the lead in accepted ballots as some of the biggest counties (*cough* Fulton *cough*) get through their backlog of unprocessed ballots.

[Rookie Yinzer]

611,084 (49.2%) GOP
609,252 (49.1%) DEM

What's really eye popping are the percent of people who did NOT vote in 2016.

And this data, every birth year after 1960 has a majority/pluarlity of voters born that year choosing Dem ballots:

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

611,084 (49.2%) GOP
609,252 (49.1%) DEM

What's really eye popping are the percent of people who did NOT vote in 2016.

And this data, every birth year after 1960 has a majority/pluarlity of voters born that year choosing Dem ballots:

I imagine Democrats haven't outvoted Republicans in the primary in Georgia since 2008 right?

[Adam Griffin]

100 year-old yellow dogs still lighting candles next to their FDR portraits. RIP Greatest Generation

[Bidenworth2020]

Sorry if this is the wrong topic, but I figured I would get the quickest response from Griff if I posted here .

Anyway, my question is-- How much protest vote is left in rural GA? I remember in 2016 Sanders cracked 40 in most of northern GA and 44 in Brantley (which Kemp won 91-8 LOL). Are we going to see similar amounts of protest voting this time around (controlling for the fact that Biden is the only remaining candidate)?

[YE]

Why the spike in voters for people born in the late 90s compared to the mid 90s?

[Rookie Yinzer]

Why the spike in voters for people born in the late 90s compared to the mid 90s?

First Prez election year and excited to get involved? More likely to live with parents or have had their absentee ballot request application sent to their parent’s house? Parents making sure they get their vote in.

[Adam Griffin]

Why the spike in voters for people born in the late 90s compared to the mid 90s?

Basically everybody gets auto-registered now in GA (mostly when they pass through DMV). Thanks to this year's universal ABM application campaign, those who are teenagers or in their early 20s are far more likely to actually reside at the address where they first registered when they got their driver's license. If only updating info via DMV, that info only gets updated once every 5-8 years, depending on which license you get. Young people move a lot: the chances of somebody who is 25 still living where they did when they were 18 is much lower than it is for somebody who's 21.

There's also still a wave of people who haven't been picked up by AVR yet (who got their licenses last renewed in 2012-2016) that likely compounds the problem among youngs, who'd be between 23-26 now. That'd suggest that people born between 1994-1997 would be most likely to have the lowest turnout through universal ABM mailings (by virtue of out-of-date VR addresses/not being registered at all yet), which seems to be the case here.  

[Adam Griffin]

Sorry if this is the wrong topic, but I figured I would get the quickest response from Griff if I posted here .

Anyway, my question is-- How much protest vote is left in rural GA? I remember in 2016 Sanders cracked 40 in most of northern GA and 44 in Brantley (which Kemp won 91-8 LOL). Are we going to see similar amounts of protest voting this time around (controlling for the fact that Biden is the only remaining candidate)?

By your definition: no. Maybe if all of the primary vote had occurred in March (when it was initially scheduled) you could expect a good 30-35% for Sanders in rural North GA assuming the national trajectory at the time (or outright wins had Sanders walked from Super Tuesday with a plurality/majority of delegates), but a solid majority of the Democratic primary vote will have been cast after its rescheduling to June/after the state mailed ballot applications to everybody.

Additionally, there'll be minimal cross-over protest-voting from the GOP since the presidential & state/local primaries were rescheduled/combined on the same day (historically, pres primary is in March and state/local in May); more Ds will probably crossover to vote R than the other way around in the areas you mentioned given local GOP dominance/desire to weigh in on local de-facto GE outcomes in the GOP primary.

So regardless of percentage, I doubt there'll be any real D "protest-voting" in GA this cycle in rural areas - though I'd argue that what you saw in GA in the 2016 presidential primary wasn't "protest voting" given 1) the areas where Sanders did well are dominated by the GOP, 2) there is no party registration in GA and 3) Sanders generally did best in overwhelmingly white areas where a combination of Democratic racial polarization and general strong performance for Sanders among whites was to be expected regardless. Especially in NW GA, a combination of rural white and young Latino voters legitimately gave Sanders their votes out of preference in '16 rather than protest.

If you want to know the "protest effect" in Southern Appalachia, then compare Sanders' performances in North GA to counties across the state line in Western NC (closed primaries there; basically a 10-point margin difference).