Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[TheLaRocca]

After today's update of voters, the electorate got quite a bit blacker (33.6 -> 34.4) and substantially younger (18-29: 5.2 -> 6.1; 65+: 60.0 -> 52.5).

601,247 voters have cast ballots as of Monday.

How do you see Georgia going?

Def gonna be close.

[Adam Griffin]

Well, everybody (effectively) is registered in GA now: number has to be at least 97% of VEP at this point.

GEORGIA EASY VOTER REGISTRATION OPTIONS BREAK NEW RECORDS

(ATLANTA) – Georgia has hit a new record high registration level. As of October 6, Georgia had 7,587,625 registered voters throughout the state. Over 5 million of those came through automatic registration at the Department of Driver Services, a program of the Office of the Secretary to make registering new voters and updating voter information simple and easy.

“The continued growth of Georgia’s registered voting population is a testament to the simple and easy registration options the Secretary of State’s office provides to Georgia voters, including automated registration through DDS,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “As Georgia’s strong economy continues to attract the best and brightest from around the country, even during the pandemic, my office has the infrastructure in place for anyone who wants to register and participate in the democratic process.”

Georgia voters have taken advantage of the numerous convenient and easy ways to register. Of the 7.6 million registered voters according to preliminary data, 5,002,856 of them have registered through automatic registration at the Department of Driver Services. Another 734,000 of those registered voters did so online through the Secretary of State’s website. 1,850,464 registered with paper registration applications.

The final numbers will likely be higher as counties continue to process registration applications, including those submitted online and registrations completed by DDS.

The 7.587 million total registered voters for the November 2020 general elections represents a more than 600,000 registered voter increase since November 2018.

Historically, Georgia has had incredibly high voter registration rates. According to the 2016 U.S. Election Assistance Commission Survey, 95.4% of Georgia’s eligible voting population was registered to vote in 2016. The number of overall registered voters increased from 6.657 million in November 2016 to 6.944 million in November 2018.

Georgia is recognized as a national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 16 days of early voting (which has been called the “gold standard”), and no excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and election participation, seeing the largest increase in average turnout of any other state in the 2018 midterm election and record primary turnout in 2020, with over 1.1 million absentee by mail voters and over 1.2 million in-person voters utilizing Georgia’s new, secure, paper ballot voting system.

[skbl17]

[snip]

Nice! I wonder how many of those are active registered voters.

[Adam Griffin]

[snip]

Nice! I wonder how many of those are active registered voters.

Strictly speaking/by the state's formal definition:

Active: 7002328
Inactive: 585297

[Adam Griffin]

Also, just to clarify, apparently registrations (active + inactive) exceed 100% according to Michael McDonald's calculations via Census data:

Registrations (Total): 7587625
Registrations (Active): 7002328
Registrations (Inactive): 585297
Georgia VEP: 7383562*

Total, % of VEP: 102.76%
Active, % of VEP: 94.84%

* The denominator reflects the Census Bureau's July 1, 2018 and July 1, 2019 voting-age population estimates interpolated to Nov. 1, 2020; non-citizen estimates from the 2019 1-Year American Community Survey; the year-end 2018 DOJ prison report; and the year-end 2018 DOJ probation and parole report.

[Bootes Void]

if republicans lose Georgia in November, will they try to repeal or severely tighten up automatic registering? I have a weird feeling that they might to delay Georgia from becoming a full blue state. Or maybe Georgia becomes Florida 2.0 where its a tilt r swing state for eternity. I dont know

[GALeftist]

It's been almost two weeks since I requested my absentee ballot (for the second time; the first request didn't go through somehow) and it still hasn't arrived in the mail. Apropos of nothing, just wanted to vent

[Adam Griffin]

It's been almost two weeks since I requested my absentee ballot (for the second time; the first request didn't go through somehow) and it still hasn't arrived in the mail. Apropos of nothing, just wanted to vent

Have you checked the status of your ballot to make sure it was mailed?

https://www.mvp.sos.ga.gov/  <-- Enter your name, DOB & county:

[Adam Griffin]

if republicans lose Georgia in November, will they try to repeal or severely tighten up automatic registering? I have a weird feeling that they might to delay Georgia from becoming a full blue state. Or maybe Georgia becomes Florida 2.0 where its a tilt r swing state for eternity. I dont know

I can't believe they implemented it in the first place. God knows I wouldn't have done so if I was in their shoes. The writing has been on the wall for a decade for the GOP here, but hilariously enough, it was Progressive Hero™ SoS Brian Kemp who pushed for and oversaw most of these changes.

[skbl17]

if republicans lose Georgia in November, will they try to repeal or severely tighten up automatic registering? I have a weird feeling that they might to delay Georgia from becoming a full blue state. Or maybe Georgia becomes Florida 2.0 where its a tilt r swing state for eternity. I dont know

I can't believe they implemented it in the first place. God knows I wouldn't have done so if I was in their shoes. The writing has been on the wall for a decade for the GOP here, but hilariously enough, it was Progressive Hero™ SoS Brian Kemp who pushed for and oversaw most of these changes.

That's the funny thing - there was never any court ruling or statute mandating AVR, Kemp just did it anyway. Usually, good things^TM for voter rights in the South typically come about as the result of litigation.

By the way, do you still stand by the graph^TM you made vis-à-vis the future of Georgia governor's races (can't find the original post, but I did save the URL,) or has there been any data in the last two years to change your opinion on where things (plausibly) stand going into 2022? It might not be the best time to ask this question, considering there is an imminent election that might give us a better idea of Georgia voter trends, but I'm curious.

[GALeftist]

It's been almost two weeks since I requested my absentee ballot (for the second time; the first request didn't go through somehow) and it still hasn't arrived in the mail. Apropos of nothing, just wanted to vent

Have you checked the status of your ballot to make sure it was mailed?

https://www.mvp.sos.ga.gov/  <-- Enter your name, DOB & county:

Yep, issued September 28. Maybe it'll get here today ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[QAnonKelly]

My mom also waited 3 hours today but my sister was an hour and a half. Guess she just got there at the right time.

[Rookie Yinzer]

I don’t know if I’ve said this here but my friend’s grandfather 70+ years old registered for the first time and will be voting straight D including Warnock (per my advice )

[Adam Griffin]

Looks like those avoidable multi-hour lines on Monday might've knocked some sense into people: there have been 261,156 new mail ballot requests over the past 48 hours. That's over 15% of all mail ballot requests this cycle (and that's including the 500k who automatically received them due to age/disability/residence after voting in the June primary).

Chart below shows number of applications from the point that SoS rolled out the online mail ballot application process:

[Adam Griffin]

As of Sunday's data: this highlights the in-person/mail ratios of ballots in each county. Statewide and as of Sunday night, 55.27% of ballots had been cast via in-person voting; 44.73% via mail ballots.

This map shows each county's breakdown based on that. I'd wager that - barring unique local exceptions - any county where at least 35-40% of the early vote is mail ballots currently is a county where Democrats are overperforming relative to past cycles in the early vote.

I'm curious what's going on in central Georgia with regard to the contiguous cluster of majority-VBM counties. These are a variety of different counties in terms of race, population density and income: some make sense (Hancock is the blackest, Baldwin is a college county, etc), while others do not. It's almost as if early in-person voting might not be available in some of these places (or organizers are placing significant focus there for some reason) or these counties aren't reliably reporting in-person voting totals.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Metro Atlanta weekend voters pleasantly surprised by short, efficient lines

[GAKas]

Absentee ballot was accepted last week! First time voting straight Democratic (or straight any party really). Glad the absentee system is easy enough in Georgia since that's how I've voted in all but 2 elections lol

[Calthrina950]

Interestingly enough, I happened to catch a glimpse of a CBS This Morning report earlier today about the close presidential race in Georgia. They interviewed three Georgia voters. One of them, a black gentleman, is a driver for "Souls to the Polls", the traditional effort organized by black churches and other black community organizations, in Georgia and elsewhere in the country, to transport voters from their homes or churches to the polls. He told the interviewer (CBS correspondent Mark Strassman) that he didn't care if the voter were "voting Democrat, Republican, independent, Snow White"-he just wanted to get people to the polls. The second voter interviewed was a black lady, who was being transported by this driver-she stated (unsurprisingly) that she voted for Biden.

But the third voter was the most interesting of all, and one that I have doubts about. A white man, he is a registered Democrat who said he had been a Hillary Clinton supporter back in 2016, but was voting for Trump this time because of "court packing", which he thinks is extreme. I don't buy it, as I seriously doubt that someone would be turned off from Biden just because of that one issue. Here's the clip, so people on here can judge for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQviiXz_XA&ab_channel=CBSThisMorning.

[skbl17]

Haven't done an update on the Gwinnett County GOP dumpster fire in a while, but apparently (Dem internal, so usual caveats apply) Nicole Love Hendrickson (D) is polling at 62% in the race for the open county commission chair seat.

Just for reference, the retiring chair Charlotte Nash (R) won 52.6% of the vote in 2016.

Even if this poll is inflated on the Dem margin, I am 99.99% confident the Dems will sweep the county commission next week (every Republican-held seat is up, they're all open, and the map is a really bad GOP dummymander - Abrams won every seat by double digits) as well as all the other contested partisan county offices. The question is, will this be a rare case of downballot outrunning upballot, or are the top-of-the-ticket races even worse for Republicans in Gwinnett?

After Abrams notched nearly 57% of the vote in Gwinnett County, Democrats believe if they can lift that percentage to 60%, Biden will carry the state on the strength of a suburban surge. A recent internal Democratic poll that placed the party’s candidate for county commissioner chair at 62% left Keaton heartened.

“And if we hit 62 on a county race, then we would surely get it for the top of the ticket,” she said.

[NYSforKennedy2024]

You know, Ossoff and Warnock aren't my ideal Democrats, but anyone else just really hyped for the genuine opportunity for both of the seats to flip blue; even if for a few months? Just for a genuinely good moment to happen? I'm pretty excited for them, and I'm glad that recent polling is indicating some wins.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Is there a site, report or list of which Georgia legislative races to follow? I've been increasingly interested in the Georgia downballot races and how both chambers will end up, but not sure which ones to follow

[DrScholl]

Democrats received 63.77% of the combined primary vote in Gwinnett County. It's not at all impossible that the polling for the county chair race is accurate.

[skbl17]

Is there a site, report or list of which Georgia legislative races to follow? I've been increasingly interested in the Georgia downballot races and how both chambers will end up, but not sure which ones to follow

I know Election Twitter has a spreadsheet of ratings, and CNalysis is watching state legislative races (they characterize both chambers as Safe R).

Cook hasn't done much reporting on the General Assembly, but in their most recent subscribers-only article they classify both chambers as Lean R. I feel that is a bit bullish for the House and outlandish for the Senate.

Control of the state Senate is not competitive in my view, but races to watch would be:

- SD-48 (Dem held; should be an easy hold)
- SD-9 (GOP held; Gwinnett County; Dems should be slightly favored in this environment)
- SD-17 (GOP held; Henry/Newton/Rockdale; GOP tilting but should be watched in this environment)
- SD-32 (GOP held; East Cobb; should be an easy GOP hold unless something dramatic happens)
- SD-37 (GOP held; Kennesaw/Acworth/West Cobb; likely GOP hold but Dems did narrowly win the State Senate primary vote)
- SD-45 (GOP held; Buford/Rest Haven; likely GOP hold)
- SD-56 (GOP held; Roswell; tossup seat)

There is a nonzero chance that Dems could win the state House if they're having a truly unbelievable night. Personally, I don't think it happens, but enough seats are competitive that it's not impossible (Likely R).

I'd watch:

- HD-132 (Dem held; Newnan/Luthersville/Hogansville/LaGrange; minority leader's seat; Dem tilting but needs to be watched as an ancestral Dem seat)
- most of the north metro Atlanta seats (37, 48, and 108 are Dem held by slim margins, but the environment and trends are such that they should be fine; Dems are all but certain to gain HD-106; the number of GOP-held seats that fall beyond 106 will depend on how good a night Dems have in the metro)
- HD-109 (GOP held; Henry/Newton/Rockdale; probably a Dem gain in this environment)
- HD-110 (GOP held; Henry/Butts; likely GOP hold but could be a sleeper gain if Dems put up a crazy performance in Locust Grove and southern McDonough)
- HD-117 (GOP held; Athens; GOP tilting)
- HD-119 (GOP held; Athens; GOP tilting)
- HD-138 (GOP held; Americus/Cusseta; GOP leaning)
- HD-145 (GOP held; Eatonton/Milledgeville; GOP leaning but could be a possible Dem gain if Biden is doing very well in Baldwin County)
- HD-147 (GOP held; Warner Robins; GOP tilting)
- HD-151 (GOP held; black belt west of Albany up to almost Columbus; GOP tilting but Dems do really well in primaries and downballot - the Dem-turned-Republican Gerald Greene has a solid personal vote; we'll see if he can hold on)
- HD-164 (GOP held; Savannah; tossup)

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Democrats received 63.77% of the combined primary vote in Gwinnett County. It's not at all impossible that the polling for the county chair race is accurate.

I’d be shocked if Biden didn’t get at least 60% in Gwinnett. Harris County, TX is pretty similar demographically, and I’d be similarly shocked if Biden didn’t get 60% at least there as well.

[Adam Griffin]

Democrats received 63.77% of the combined primary vote in Gwinnett County. It's not at all impossible that the polling for the county chair race is accurate.

I’d be shocked if Biden didn’t get at least 60% in Gwinnett. Harris County, TX is pretty similar demographically, and I’d be similarly shocked if Biden didn’t get 60% at least there as well.

I don't see Biden winning Georgia unless he's getting at least 61-62% of the two-party vote in Gwinnett.

I wouldn't be surprised if Biden actually managed to meet (or slightly exceed) the D primary vote share there either (again, as measured by two-way vote). Four factors to consider:

• Latino and Asian participation in primaries is considerably lower than in generals
• A small share of votes cast statewide were 70/30 in favor of Democrats prior to early March, but once the presidential primary was merged with the state primary and the date moved to June, neither side had an inherent advantage or disadvantage that'd affect turnout
• It may sound miniscule (and is in most places), but Gwinnett is one of the few counties in the country where even just six months of demographic shift could have a measurable impact on Democratic vote share
• Democrats becoming the majority in Gwinnett may have caused some Republicans to pull a Democratic primary ballot for local contests (usually this takes a few years to fully take hold in an area, though)

I'm not sure if #4 was even a factor, but it's still difficult to say how much (if any) these three elements altered primary vote share relative to what we'll see in the GE.