I voted in-person on election day in November, so did most Democrats I knew...
I always thought it was odd that people thought the 2020 trends would continue indefinitely. If Dems have an edge now in absentee/early vote, it's because Trump's insane conspiracy theories about your vote not counting unless you cast it in-person still have influence among rightists. Not because Democrats are still afraid of COVID or something.
The issue regarding Georgia is that - contrary to a lot of the "voter suppression" rhetoric (some of it is legitimate, but a good amount is not) - Georgia has had and continues to have fairly flexible and liberal voting laws compared to the country as a whole: a minimum of 17 days of EV in regular elections (up to 19 days for counties that choose to offer Sunday voting), no-excuse absentee in-person
and mail voting, automatic ABMs for every election in a cycle once somebody who is 65+, disabled or a veteran applies for one that year, automatic voter registration via DMV, voter registration or change/update info processes via SoS website, seamless ABM application processes via the SoS, etc).
It might surprise you to know that in a regular election (or at least a high-turnout one, like the 2021 or 2022 runoffs), the last time a minority of Georgia's voters cast ballots early was 2014. We're over a decade into the bulk of voters casting their ballots before Election Day.
2022-GE 64.1%
2021-RO 70.4%
2020-GE 80.3%
2018-RO 31.1%
2018-GE 53.7%
2016-GE 58.6%
2014-GE 36.8%
2012-GE 50.8%
Voters in Georgia are conditioned to vote early, irrespective of 2020 trends (which
weren't sustainable: 26% of GA's vote was cast by mail in that election, as an example). As far as the share of the electorate who voted on Election Day in the runoff, however, this was - by contemporary standards - rather large and unprecedented.
