Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Rookie Yinzer]

I voted a straight Democratic ticket (including Warnock for the special) yesterday.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I voted a straight Democratic ticket (including Warnock for the special) yesterday.

Still waiting for our absentee ballots to show up here in Forsyth County, although my kid in Athens got theirs yesterday.

[Adam Griffin]

Sending off tomorrow (once I fill the rest of the races in with "Democrat" write-in votes):

[Continential]

I really hope that Annette Davis Jackson doesn't get the votes of uninformed Georgia voters because she's the first Democrat

[Cassandra]

I really hope that Annette Davis Jackson doesn't get the votes of uninformed Georgia voters because she's the first Democrat

Adam's ballot above lists her as a Republican.

[Adam Griffin]

VBM Requests as of 9/26, % of Total 2018 Vote:
Abrams Counties: 37.90% (817453/2156818)
Georgia, Overall: 33.28%
Kemp Counties: 27.72% (496804/1792128)

[Heebie Jeebie]

If Warnock loses this year, what are the chances McBath runs for that Senate seat in 2022?

[Del Tachi]

If Warnock loses this year, what are the chances McBath runs for that Senate seat in 2022?

Possibly very likely, depending on how redistricting goes

[Rookie Yinzer]

If Warnock loses this year, what are the chances McBath runs for that Senate seat in 2022?

I think Tomlinson will run again tbh!

[GeorgiaModerate]

Our absentee ballots, which were issued on Sep. 18 according to the SOS page and absentee file, still haven't shown up, so I called the Forsyth County elections office.  They asked me to give it until Friday because they mailed out over 30,000 ballots and the local post office was "overwhelmed" by them.

[Pericles]

Why does that Georgia ballot say 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic'?

[Rookie Yinzer]

Example: Joe Biden is a "Democrat" not a "Democratic".

[QAnonKelly]

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1310685974305927177?s=20
The state's been ordered to have paper backups of the elections system.

[Adam Griffin]

I thought this might be one illustrative indicator beyond simple VBM requests, since the youngest cohorts are the least likely to vote by mail in most circumstances. It's also probably indirectly somewhat of an indicator (statewide) where young people are either fleeing in droves (i.e. parts of South GA) or being swamped by out-of-state retirees (NE GA mountains).

[GeorgiaModerate]

Fulton unveils new mobile voting precinct vehicle to help with election

Officials claim the vehicle is the first of its kind in Georgia. Costing roughly $350,000, the vehicle is Fulton’s latest tool to help avoid the debacle seen nationwide during the June election, which featured some voters waiting all day in lines and many voters who never got their mail-in ballots.
...
The vehicle holds eight ballot-marking devices that voters will use to select candidates, one scanner where voters will feed their printed selections and two places to check in on polls pads.
...
For those who chose to vote in person, Barron said there’s another vehicle set to be delivered from the Ohio-based manufacturer Farber in the coming weeks.

The vehicles will also be used to react to polling locations that have long lines. The vehicles are able to zip around the county to fill any gaps should a precinct go down. But it might have trouble keeping up with Ga. 400 traffic, the speedometer only tops out at 100 mph.

Regarding the last sentence: Georgia 400 is known locally as the "Alpharetta Autobahn", and commonly has people speeding by crazy amounts (a motorcycle was recently clocked at 178 mph on it).

[Adam Griffin]

I wanted to analyze preliminary VBM data specifically for GA Latinos after my earlier map today, given my county (Whitfield) is the most Latino in the state & my county party has been aggressively pushing early & VBM campaigns for Latino voters in our area (our digital operations regularly focus on a radius within 20 linear miles of Dalton - especially for Latinos, especially given the cluster of Latinos on our border in Gordon and Murray specifically). This is because if left to their own devices, many Latinos (along with Asians and young voters at large) tend to wait until Election Day to vote, and often get told they are not registered, don't have proper ID on them or skip most of the down-ballot - which lead to large drop-off and turn-away rates at the polls.

Of the 10 most-Latino counties in the state, I still was surprised to see 3 of the top 4 in terms of equity were in our "turf" (Chattahoochee, #2, is a military base predominantly, so lots of military ballots/VBM isn't unusual).

Image below shows the 10 most-Latino counties, along with their Latino population percentages, the percentage of total VBM requests coming explicily from SOS-identified Latinos, and the "equity" (i.e. the percentage of Latino VBM requests relative to population).

[GeorgiaModerate]

I voted a straight Democratic ticket (including Warnock for the special) yesterday.

Still waiting for our absentee ballots to show up here in Forsyth County, although my kid in Athens got theirs yesterday.

They showed up today.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Hot take
GA Special is seat #52

[ON Progressive]

Is there any reason why the votes cast so far are extremely old? Two thirds of the accepted ballots so far are people over the age of 65!

[Continential]

Is there any reason why the votes cast so far are extremely old? Two thirds of the accepted ballots so far are people over the age of 65!

Traditionally, wasn’t the black vote on the day of the election?

[Adam Griffin]

Is there any reason why the votes cast so far are extremely old? Two thirds of the accepted ballots so far are people over the age of 65!

Anybody 65 or over (or anybody who is disabled, a veteran, or living overseas) who requested a mail ballot during the primary (or primary runoff) automatically receives mail ballots for all future elections in said cycle (primary runoff, general election, state general election runoff & federal general election runoff). As such, several hundred thousand mail ballots were baked in for seniors due to COVID leading to higher requests for mail ballots during the primaries (along with the state mailing VBM applications to everybody).

This is why the senior mail vote is so high (it's not abnormal at all - if anything, their % of overall requests is lower than it otherwise would be). If you look at my map above, it's honestly astounding that the statewide 18-29 VBM request share is now above 10%.

Seniors do seem to be returning them faster - as they are only 46% of requests thus far - but these voters are also disproportionately D compared to past cycles (remember that the primary was 55% D in GA, and since the primary is largely responsible for most VBM requests being mailed out to seniors as explained above...).

[Adam Griffin]

Is there any reason why the votes cast so far are extremely old? Two thirds of the accepted ballots so far are people over the age of 65!

Traditionally, wasn’t the black vote on the day of the election?

Black voters have tended to vote early in-person. Election Day vote has generally been several percentage points less black than in-person EV. As far as VBM is concerned, it has generally resembled ED vote more so than EV vote. Prior to Abrams and her pushing of VBM in '18, mail ballots were generally the GOP's best vote type in Georgia ('16 less so, but still not shabby for the GOP).

Just as an example, 2014-GOV:

[OneJ]

https://twitter.com/beardedcrank/status/1312529630025322497?s=20

[LimoLiberal]

https://twitter.com/beardedcrank/status/1312529630025322497?s=20

With 100% turnout of any eligible voter, you'd expect just 33% of that cohort to be 2016 non-voters. This stat could indicate a couple of different things, namely:

1. There's a surge of youth turnout, from those who've turned 18 since the last election and/or those who were 18 but didn't vote.
2. Mail-in ballots are being disproportionately utilized by college students who are residents of Georgia but don't live at home and can't vote early in-person or on election day. Those students are likely to be 18-22 and wouldn't have been able to vote in the last election.

I'm guessing it's mostly #2 but I think we will see an increase in youth turnout this year relative to other cohorts.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Let's remember a couple of things:

It's not uncommon at all for anywhere from 50-60% of the 18-29 crowd in a given election to be first-time voters or voters who didn't cast ballots in the previous presidential election. Again, remember that this metric is counting everybody who voted in 2018 but not in 2016: given 2018 was a de-facto presidential election turnout-wise in GA, it's very much worth keeping in mind (especially for such a young group).

The reason for this broader dynamic is somewhat simple: relative to other age groups, there tends to be a small uptick in voters between the ages of 18-21, followed by a drop-off among those 22-25, followed by growth once again in the late-20s.

This means that the youngest spike in voters are first-time voters because they literally weren't able to vote 4 years (or in some cases, even 2 years) prior; more people are interested in voting when it's the first election where they can do so. Among the age range of those who possibly could have voted four years prior (22-25), for whatever reason, interest seems to be lost to a certain degree (maybe because they're no longer in college or living at home, which can complicate voting). Among the 26-29 group, it's a combination of first-time voters finally starting to come "online", as well as those who may have voted 8 years prior (but not 4 years prior), as well as those who have voted every time since they were eligible.

At any rate, when you plug these phenomena into the proverbial equation, it leads to a hefty share (often a majority) of 18-29s being first-time voters. I highly doubt we'll see the figure be anywhere close to 70% once everybody has voted - not only because of usual trends, but also because a lot of younger people turned out for both 2016 and 2018.