Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[forsythvoter]

I live in nearby South Forsyth County and would bet money on Biden flipping a number of northern Atlanta suburbs. A lot of my co-workers live in Roswell, Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Dunwoody and a good number of them are flipping from Trump to Biden this year. The ones that are flipping are still undecided on the senate races, though - many of us vote Republican out of habit, but Trump is really causing a lot of folks in this area to have second thoughts now that it's "Trump's Party". Trump will still win more exurban areas (including my county and nearby Cherokee), but I'll be curious to see the margins. I've seen quite a few Biden signs in my neighborhood, which would have been unheard of up until fairly recently.

[forsythvoter]

Thanks @TrendsareUsuallyReal! It's definitely going to happen in South Forsyth - Biden might get closer to 40% in this part of the county from what I'm observing, but not sure how the more exurban and rural areas will go.

[forsythvoter]

Trump definitely has room to fall from Kemp's performance in 2018 in Forsyth given trends that are ongoing but have been accelerating:
1) There's a sizeable contingent of Republican-leaning voters who've never liked Trump but still voted Republican, but and now think Biden would be easier to stomach for the next four years than Trump. I and several of my neighbors / friends fall into this bucket, actually
2) On top of that, there's also a rapidly growing Asian (especially Indian) population that seems highly excited by Harris being selected as VP, and they will probably turn-out in much higher numbers than is typical
3) Tech workers who have started moving into the county in large numbers due to the tech boom in nearby Alpharetta. It seems like people in those industries lean pretty Democratic.

My guess is that Forsyth will go somewhere around 65-35 for Trump (for comparison, it was 71-24 Trump in 2016 and 81-18 Romney in 2012).

That would be downright crippling for Trump. Kemp won it 71-28, and that was already a historically low performance for R's.

[forsythvoter]

I think Trump will win Fayette by somewhere in the mid to high single digits (maybe low double digits if he's having a good night), but it's pretty clearly heading in the D direction. Fayette strikes me as a southside metro version of Cobb - mix of traditionally and still affluent (PTC) with rapidly diversifying inner / middle class suburbia (North Fayette and Fayetteville), plus a few more rural parts towards the southern end. Cobb went from +14R in 2012 to +2D in 2016, so I could see a similar shift away from the Trump in Fayette this time around.

[forsythvoter]

Hope they recover and start to take COVID more seriously in terms of state policy

Rep. Drew Ferguson has tested positive for COVID, and Gov. Kemp and his wife are quarantining after exposure.

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1322231996312158209

[forsythvoter]

Forsyth and maybe Cherokee should really be part of the ATL region given most of the population and growth are in the southern portions, but the northern half of the two counties would fit in well with North GA culturally. Forsyth is almost certainly going to have a strong D swing (may be the largest in the state) due to new voters and Trump being an unusually bad fit for the high amount of college educated voters in this area.

Besides their presences in the final 48 hours of the campaign, where they are going says a lot as well. Particularly interesting to me is why Trump's team felt the need to choose Rome as opposed to, say, Gainesville or Canton.

(I saw some real internal data broken down by region at the beginning of October: let's just say that Rome/NW GA would make a better defensive choice for Trump if that data was accurate; it showed Trump sliding much more in NW GA than NE GA.)

That's interesting and frankly surprising. Isn't NE GA (Hall, Forsyth, Cherokee, etc.) more connected to Atlanta and thus more liberal? Do you see anything on the ground in NW GA to indicate Trump slipping?

Screw it: we're 72 hours away and this R internal was taken the first week of October (+ I've already showed it to some Atlas members in confidence). I got the region boundaries used, the topline margins from each region and the share of each region in the poll for the presidential leaked to me. Here's the map/regional breakdowns (reconstructed by me in DRA) along with 16/18 margins added (by me, of course). 2500 LVs.

"NW Georgia" here includes a significant portion of suburban ATL turf (Cherokee, Paulding, even Carroll) - but it would not shock me at all to see more a shift across the broader turf when compared to NE GA: a lot of people moving into NE GA are wealthy out-of-state types seeking rural life (make of that what you will). NW (non-ATL) GA on the other hand is an area with the largest Latino population share in GA (as a broader geographic region) and is one of the most heavily-manufacturing economies in the country. Latinos + tariffs/job losses + the suburban ATL swings = not too surprising.

I don't expect it to swing by 11 points any more than I expect the inner ATL metro to only swing by 8, but alas. Some of these regions only have 150-300 LVs each. Rounded, this showed Biden +1 overall.

[forsythvoter]

My sense is Raffensperger is still pretty popular even among most Republicans here in the N Atl suburbs (which also tend to have the highest turnout in the R primaries), so I'm not convinced Hice would take him out in a primary. I would also think the State Establishment R circles would also strongly back Raffensperger against Hice, which carries some weight given most voters probably don't know who Hice is.

That said, if Hice does win, barring the Ds nominating someone truly crazy (someone along the lines of Cynthia McKinney), I do think the race would be the Dems' to lose.