Why did Ossoff underperform Biden in November?

[MargieCat]

Why did Ossoff underperform Biden in November? Only to match his turnout for the most part this time around?

Was there really a lot of ticket splitting or was it people leaving their ballots blank in Fulton County and the Atlanta suburbs?

Did the Biden-Perdue ticket splitters return and switch to Ossoff? Or did they just disengage altogether?

I'd love to hear your hypotheses.

[DaleCooper]

This may be a simplistic take, but I think a lot of it was a huge messaging failure on the part of Democratic congressional candidates nationwide. His and Warnock's focus on outreach and door-knocking likely helped too.

[Pericles]

Along with some Trump voters believing their leaders and thinking their votes wouldn't count, the Biden-Perdue voters would not have appreciated their Senator cowardly falling in line with attempts to overturn their votes.

[DaleCooper]

Along with some Trump voters believing their leaders and thinking their votes wouldn't count, the Biden-Perdue voters would not have appreciated their Senator cowardly falling in line with attempts to overturn their votes.

This is also very important, I think, in studying the Republican Party's failure here. Perdue clearly forgot or didn't appreciate that in November of last year, he became a Republican Senator in a Biden state. Not only that, but he nearly avoided a runoff thanks to Biden voters. To double-down on Trump in a state Trump lost was incredibly foolish on his part.

[MargieCat]

Along with some Trump voters believing their leaders and thinking their votes wouldn't count, the Biden-Perdue voters would not have appreciated their Senator cowardly falling in line with attempts to overturn their votes.

This is also very important, I think, in studying the Republican Party's failure here. Perdue clearly forgot or didn't appreciate that in November of last year, he became a Republican Senator in a Biden state. Not only that, but he nearly avoided a runoff thanks to Biden voters. To double-down on Trump in a state Trump lost was incredibly foolish on his part.

I agree.

I live in Texas and even though Trump performed better than any presidential candidate in Texas in terms of raw vote, Cornyn still outperformed him.

After that, it seems like Cornyn became a little less "Trumpy." Supposedly he is not going to object to the Biden win, but we shall see later on today.

Perdue and Loeffler probably should have distanced themselves from Trump. But they were in a no-win situation.

[Blair]

Didn't we have a poster here who was a Biden/Perdue voter who then voted for Ossoff in the run-off?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Perdue name, he is the cuz of Gov Sonny Perdue, that's why Perdue was fav until Mcconnell blocked the 2K checks, now even if military ballots come in, Perdue can't overcome Ossoff lead. Ossoff leads by 16K

[Stuart98]

Didn't we have a poster here who was a Biden/Perdue voter who then voted for Ossoff in the run-off?

Did forsythvoter do that? I know he voted for Biden in November and Ossoff yesterday, I think he voted for Perdue in November but not sure.

[SWE]

Ossof ran the standard 2020 Senate democratic candidate strategy of campaigning towards Democratic donors as opposed to the actual voters of his state. It wasn't as much an incompetent mess as say, Sarah Gideon, but he was still a weak candidate who got carried by a very favorable set of circumstances over the past few weeks

[7,052,770]

Probably favorable coattails from Warnock pulled him over the line.

[It's not just that you are a crook senator]

Didn't we have a poster here who was a Biden/Perdue voter who then voted for Ossoff in the run-off?

Did forsythvoter do that? I know he voted for Biden in November and Ossoff yesterday, I think he voted for Perdue in November but not sure.

He did biden ossoff and loeffler then switched to ossoff and warnock

[Buzz]

Because the Trump base in rural GA showed up in November.  Yesterday those people stayed home.  Perdue probably didn’t lose many voters, turnout was just worse.

[One Term Floridian]

I think Democrats—mostly out of desperation to cling back the senate—changed their senate strategy and actually showed up to knock on doors, do rallies, loosen up self-imposed COVID restrictions up a bit and it worked this time. Had we done the same in NC or even MT & ME for the entire year who knows how different things would be now

[Xing]

In November, Democrats allowed Republicans to paint Biden's election as likely, and claim that there needed to be a "check" on him. They also didn't put as much effort into their ground game. They were much more effective at messaging in the runoffs, and more effectively tied Perdue/Loeffler to Trump.

[One Term Floridian]

Because the Trump base in rural GA showed up in November.  Yesterday those people stayed home.  Perdue probably didn’t lose many voters, turnout was just worse.

You’re right about the base not showing up as forcefully as it did in November and that he didn’t lose many Trump voters but I’d argue with the better Dem outreach and perfect storm against the GA GOP especially in the last week, he lost a great deal of Biden/Perdue voters. This was the last gasp of the Perdoo brand in GA.

[MargieCat]

Because the Trump base in rural GA showed up in November.  Yesterday those people stayed home.  Perdue probably didn’t lose many voters, turnout was just worse.

You’re right about the base not showing up as forcefully as it did in November and that he didn’t lose many Trump voters but I’d argue with the better Dem outreach and perfect storm against the GA GOP especially in the last week, he lost a great deal of Biden/Perdue voters. This was the last gasp of the Perdoo brand in GA.

Do you think he lost them to Ossoff or that they just skipped the runoffs altogether?

[One Term Floridian]

Because the Trump base in rural GA showed up in November.  Yesterday those people stayed home.  Perdue probably didn’t lose many voters, turnout was just worse.

You’re right about the base not showing up as forcefully as it did in November and that he didn’t lose many Trump voters but I’d argue with the better Dem outreach and perfect storm against the GA GOP especially in the last week, he lost a great deal of Biden/Perdue voters. This was the last gasp of the Perdoo brand in GA.

Do you think he lost them to Ossoff or that they just skipped the runoffs altogether?

If they voted for Biden, I’d argue they did turn up this time and for Ossoff

[AGA]

Conservative suburbanites who voted for Biden and Perdue. Ossoff did better this time due to the drop off in Republican turnout and backlash against McConnell for blocking stimulus checks.

[forsythvoter]

In November, it was more the case of Biden outperforming traditional D support levels to an extent that Ossoff just couldn't replicate because there were actually a number of moderately R leaning voters that just reverted to their typical downballot voting behaviors or voted Libertarian. The election results do seem to show that some of the Biden-Perdue / Biden - Hazel vote came around to Ossoff during the runoffs - he was consistently running 3-4% better than his November totals in most areas of the state.

[OneJ]

A few reasons I can think of:

1. Ossoff, like plenty of other Democratic candidates across the country, just wasn't strong enough on his own to outperform the top of the ticket.

2. Perdue was the incumbent who's relatively competent and not particularly unpopular.

3. Trump being a particularly bad to a large enough amount of voters that it was difficult to outperform Biden anyway which sort of goes back to point 1.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Probably favorable coattails from Warnock pulled him over the line.

There were mutual coattails. Warnock and Ossoff complimented each other.