Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Adam Griffin]

RIP Georgia's Very Own Megathread (v1; 2012-2018)
RIP Georgia's Very Own Megathread (v2; 2018-2019)

OBLIGATORY WATCHIN'

Griff's 2002-2018 Animated Precinct Map (Temporarily Down, Sorry!)

Electoral Composition by Race/Ethnicity & Gender, 2016-2021

Know Your History (Election Results):
1988: President
1990: Senate | Governor
1992: President | Senate (General) | Senate (Runoff)
1994: Governor
1996: President | Senate
1998: Senate | Governor
2000: President | Senate
2002: Senate | Governor
2004: President | Senate
2006: Governor
2008: President | Senate (General) | Senate (Runoff)  
2010: Senate | Governor
2012: President
2014: Senate | Governor
2016: President | Senate
2018: Governor
2020: President | Senate (General) | Senate (Runoff)  

Know Your History (Runoffs):

Every candidate in Georgia elections (save for Presidential candidates) must receive 50% + 1 vote to win office. In the event no candidate - whether it be in a municipal, countywide, state legislative or statewide election - receives that amount, a runoff shall be held between the top two vote-getters 4 weeks (in the case of non-federal offices) or 8 weeks (in the case of federal offices) after the general election.

Fun Fact: Runoff requirements have been changed multiple times throughout Georgia history. Until 1993, the threshold for avoiding a runoff was 50% +1 vote. After Wyche Fowler lost his Senate seat to Paul Coverdell in a Senate runoff, the Democratic legislature changed the provision to 45% +1 vote, where it would remain until the GOP took the majority in the General Assembly. In 2005, the GOP majority reverted the runoff threshold to 50% +1 vote, where it has remained ever since.

Another Fun Fact: From 1936 to 1964, Georgia had laws on the books to ensure presidential runoffs would occur if no candidate received 50% +1 vote. In the event of a runoff, the Georgia General Assembly would decide the winner. This provision was never utilized, due to no candidate winning GA with a plurality during this time. This provision was scrapped in 1968 in support of George Wallace, who ended up winning the state with a plurality for the first time in history.

[Adam Griffin]

No way Kemp's approvals are that high, nor that 98% of Georgians even have an opinion on the Governor at present.

[Adam Griffin]

MC also found Kemp with a +20 approval, though there were far more undecided and they also had Trump at +3

I could see something like 50/30 or 45/25 (maybe even 55/35 given the legislature is out of session and Kemp hasn't been stepping in crap constantly); the margin might be accurate, but the overall share of support shown above definitely isn't at or above 60. Deal's approval numbers outside of the months preceding the 2014 election (and excluding the approval spike in the final year of his tenure) followed a similar trajectory.

[Adam Griffin]

Was reading about the plan to spend money on high-speed internet lines to rural GA and it got me wondering just how much of the state doesn't have access to broadband. According to the state's statistics, it's around 8% of the population - but the sheer geographic desert where broadband isn't available is pretty astounding.


Source: Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative, https://broadband.georgia.gov

Hancock County (the blackest county in GA) has virtually no broadband access at all. As does most of the Black Belt in terms of geography. To be fair, though, this shows just how devoid of population most of GA's terrain is becoming in relative terms, given that:

Percent of Locations Unserved: 8%
Unserved Households: 334,259
Unserved Businesses: 13,710
Unserved Population: 765,739

Source: Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative, https://broadband.georgia.gov

[Adam Griffin]

Isn’t the Georgia State House unwinnable?

From a nominal standpoint and based on 2018, Democrats would need to win every seat where the GOP candidate won by single-digits to get a 1-seat majority.

[Adam Griffin]

Geez this state is so polarized. Am I right when I see only 4 districts that were decided by single digits? That's why I laugh when I see people hand wringing about Tomlinson being full throated on impeachment and blowing up the filibuster.

As far as State House goes and if I recall correctly, there were 16 HDs that were won by the GOP State House nominee by less than 10.0 points; Democrats won 75 seats (+11 compared to 2016) in the State House.

EDIT: oh, you were talking about the Senate. Yes, that sounds right more or less. In many states where legislatures have went from R to D, the Senates have flipped first. However, I think in GA, the lower chamber will be the first to flip of the two. It's not an absolute hard rule, but in GA, bigger districts = harder for Democrats to flip given the sheer polarization and localized concentration of Democratic voters.

[Adam Griffin]

Unscientific straw poll from Whitfield County's Kennedy-Carter Dinner. The vast majority of people in attendance were from Whitfield and Gordon.

(For those wondering, median age was probably ~50 and the racial breakdown was 65% white, 25% black and 10% latino; not at all much different from the national primary electorate)




And for reference, here are last year's results (taken the same week in 2018):

27% Joe Biden
23% Elizabeth Warren
21% Bernie Sanders
12% Cory Booker
11% Somebody Else
6% Kamala Harris

[Adam Griffin]

Just a couple of updates from a very reliable source:

• 15+ "credible" candidates have reached out to the state party in interest over Isakson's seat
• Sally Yates is not interested in elected office at all

[Adam Griffin]

The questions with regards to the surge of new registrants are of course:

1) What percentage will actually vote? (most of these people are being registered automatically)
2) What percentage of the white vote is Democratic?

Let's assume non-whites are at the standard 85% Democratic and whites (due to age) are at 30% Democratic: that produces a 56-44 Democratic advantage, or a net margin of 42,000 votes for Democrats.

However, assuming that half actually vote (for the time being, I think that's pretty generous actually), you're looking at a 21,000 vote margin gain, which illustrates just why it takes an insane number of new registrants to typically change elections even by a small amount.

And given we're at 7.4 million out of 10.5 million people and 24% (2.5 million) are under 18, we're getting close to being maxed out on new registrants.

[Adam Griffin]

The questions with regards to the surge of new registrants are of course:

1) What percentage will actually vote? (most of these people are being registered automatically)
2) What percentage of the white vote is Democratic?

Let's assume non-whites are at the standard 85% Democratic and whites (due to age) are at 30% Democratic: that produces a 56-44 Democratic advantage, or a net margin of 42,000 votes for Democrats.

However, assuming that half actually vote (for the time being, I think that's pretty generous actually), you're looking at a 21,000 vote margin gain, which illustrates just why it takes an insane number of new registrants to typically change elections even by a small amount.

And given we're at 7.4 million out of 10.5 million people and 24% (2.5 million) are under 18, we're getting close to being maxed out on new registrants.

There were 1 million new voters on the roll between 2016 and 2018. Even with that, turnout in relation to those numbers went down in 2018. The best candidate in the world couldn't top presidential turnout in a midterm. We need to see how 2020 shakes out with those registrants plus the ones this year and next year when presidential turnout will be closer to 70 percent rather than the 60 percent that turned out last year.

There's certainly a lot in flux that can affect things dramatically. I do think that combining 2016 and 2018 performances and turnout can paint a solid baseline picture of where we start for 2020. I did some number-crunching and came up with a base turnout of 4.935 million voters in 2020. That's based on 2016/2018 and also factors in the likely effects of GA being legitimately contested in the presidential race. I then compared that rather simplistically to raw population and how turnout in NC/VA (similarly-sized southern states that are contested by both parties) looked in 2016: both states had turnout equivalent to 47% of their populations, which is almost exactly what 4.935m would be for us as of the latest Census estimates.

R 2,485,000   50.35%
D 2,381,000   48.24%
O 69,000        1.41%

This does not factor in any elevated natural national enthusiasm for 2020 (relative to 2016) that might trickle down to GA, any phenomenal shifts in turnout among post-2018 ARVs or shifts in voters flipping from one party in 2018 to another in 2020, but it's a start. It also somewhat underlines my belief that we actually over-performed slightly in 2018 compared to what demographics would have suggested.

[Adam Griffin]

Yeah, in-person voting should be abolished for all but a few situations. De-facto party registration should be implemented and the states/counties could cover the postage costs to mail every registered voter a ballot.

After this change, voters receive a card requesting their preferences, with the options being either to fill out the card once to ensure they receive the same party's primary ballot in all future elections (or until changed via local office or online), or that they receive a party ballot for just that one upcoming election (in which case they'll be contacted via the same method ahead of future primaries). Obviously general election ballots would be much simpler.

Ballots can then either be mailed back via postage-paid envelopes or dropped off at secure drop-points in each county.

Most counties in GA are currently spending more than $1 per voter in each election just to operate the physical precincts (primary, primary runoff, general, general runoff). Spending $0.50 to mail a ballot and $0.50 to have it returned isn't a cost-prohibitive procedure.

[Adam Griffin]

Forsyth County adding five polling stations in 2020:

https://www.gpbnews.org/post/forsyth-county-adds-polling-places-ahead-2020-election

A needed development. Somewhat weird for them to backtrack, however: they went from having 22 precincts (through 2004) to 32 precincts (through 2008) to 26 precincts (through 2014) to 16 precincts. Guess the immense population growth has finally forced them to expand once again.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ To be honest, I don't know exactly how this all works and whether there are outside factors determining these premium reductions and groupings, but...gotta love how the more Democratic areas of the state get grouped into regions where smaller premium reductions will occur. Rating areas 2, 3, 5, 8 & 14 are combined the path of least resistance for congressional and state legislative D majorities. The poorer areas (the poorest of which I'm assuming is 16) largely get grouped into tier 2, while the most GOP areas (many of which are not poor at all; see 10) are in tier 3.

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia governor faces heat from right over woman he favors for Senate vacancy

Conservatives are mounting a last-minute pressure campaign to stop Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp from appointing businesswoman Kelly Loeffler to a soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat — a move that comes days after Kemp and Loeffler met with President Donald Trump to make the case for her.

...

The objections to Loeffler from the anti-abortion groups center on her position as a member of the board of directors for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, the largest hospital in the state. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony's List, called the hospital "an abortionist training hub" in a tweet Wednesday.

...

But the meeting, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by two people familiar with what took place, did not go as planned. Trump raised pointed concerns that Loeffler would be a needlessly risky choice. Loeffler would be a first-time candidate and the conservative state, he contended, was full of seasoned Republicans who could survive an election.

Trump also said he did not know how his supporters would respond to Loeffler. While she has donated to the president, she was not an original backer of his during the 2016 campaign. The president made the case there were several other Republicans, including Collins, who were safer bets.

[Adam Griffin]

I finally got around to adding 2015-2018 frames to my longstanding gubernatorial animated GIF (shown below as 2-year & 10-year/second versions).

2014-2018:


2002-2018:



1990-2018:

[Adam Griffin]

Random, but North GA is getting its first snow of the year tonight: about an inch, but none of it is going to stick since it rained all day and it's hovering around 30. Was like 65 degrees this time last night!

[Adam Griffin]

Cinyc compiled a map of population changes in every municipality and county since 2010, which you can find here. It's customizable, meaning you can change the scale/steps to make colors more or less intense based on growth/loss.

Anyway, here's Georgia:

[Adam Griffin]

As of last night, 17,337 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

55.4% Democratic
42.2% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.0% Unknown

Not sure why there are so relatively many without a party listed (i.e. the unknowns) and the poor suckers who requested a non-partisan ballot won't have anything to vote on unless there are referendums or special elections in their counties. The 55-42 ratio might look good, but given that there isn't anything on the GOP ballot other than Trump (and/or those special elections in some counties), not very impressive.

[Adam Griffin]

As of last night, 20,586 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

54.3% Democratic
43.3% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.0% Unknown

[Adam Griffin]

As of last night, 23,088 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

54.2% Democratic
43.3% Republican
1.4% Non-Partisan
1.1% Unknown

[Adam Griffin]

I’m guessing the people who request early ballots skew black?

I don't have any racial data available statewide, but this early batch I imagine (I hope?) skews somewhat older and whiter. Historically mail ballots were more GOP than the state as a whole, but 2016 and 2018 changed that trend (though if I'm recalling correctly from 2018, the initial round started off very GOP, but became much more DEM as time progressed; Abrams mail campaign).

If Republicans are only down by 12 in a presidential primary with nothing else on their ballot and no contested GOP primary - and this is reflective of the final ballot composition - then I think that's a really bad sign for the general. We saw a similar situation in NH, but the GOP overperformance was far less. It basically indicates that either the Trump campaign is really organized and turning out voters just for a show of force, or these people are so fired up that they're doing it on their own.

*Note: it's possible there are a lot of special elections, SPLOSTs, etc going on around the state and that could be driving some of it, but definitely not all unless all the big counties have issues on the ballot

[Adam Griffin]

As of last night, 24,873 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

13582   54.61% Democratic
10685    42.96% Republican
357        1.44% Non-Partisan
249        0.99% Unknown

[Adam Griffin]

As of today, 26,496 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

14591   55.07% Democratic
11256    42.48% Republican
384        1.45% Non-Partisan
265        1.00% Unknown

[Adam Griffin]

As of today, 27,754 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

14591   55.30% Democratic
11256    42.10% Republican
384        1.48% Non-Partisan
265        1.12% Unknown

[Adam Griffin]

As of today, 32,783 ballots have been requested for the March 24th presidential primary. Partisan breakdown is:

18506   56.45% Democratic
13445    41.01% Republican
461        1.41% Non-Partisan
371        1.13% Unknown