Early in person turnout in GA has exceeded general election early turnout for each of the first two days. Some of this (8.4% of early in person) is mail voters from the general switching to early in person.
A small share of early in person voters from the first two days of voting didn't vote in the general - 6.352 voters. These "new" voters are modeled at +9.4 Dem, as compared to the overall early voting universe, at +3.8 Dem.
It's difficult to draw conclusions from comparing the runoff early turnout to the general, as we will undoubtedly see people switching vote modes. But we can say that Black voters are accounting for a larger share of the vote now, relative to this same point in the general.
For this to not be an indicator of an enthusiasm advantage among Black voters, you would have to believe that more white voters are abandoning mail voting in favor of in-person, which is possible, but seems less likely.
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Add another to the list! With Michigan vote history in hand, we can now say that voters under the age of 30 expanded their share of the electorate there, over 2016, by 2pts. That's about 180k more younger voters casting a ballot than did in '16.
And another one. Young voters expanded their share of the electorate in Louisiana as well. So far young voters are 8 for 8 in states where we have full vote history and I've run the numbers. More states to come...
Okay, make that 12 for 12. Young voters also expanded their share of the electorate over '16 in AK, NE, NM, and OK. I'm yet to find a state where the youth vote didn't surge by more than overall turnout.
You've probably read a lot about white voters in the GA suburbs lately. But did you know that the county with the biggest swing towards Dems this year, nationally, was Henry County, GA? Clinton won it by 4 pts, while Biden won it by 20. Some things you should know about Henry...
The first thing you should know about how Henry County, GA became the county with the largest swing to Dems, nationally is that it didn't happen overnight. Stacey Abrams swung it by 12 pts towards Dems in her 2018 gubernatorial bid, carrying it by 16.
Was there a huge surge in white college educated turnout that made Henry County, GA the biggest Dem surge county in the US? No. The white college vote share dropped very slightly, while the overall white vote share dropped by over 9 pts. It was voters of color who surged.
I should be more clear; NYT published an analysis this week claiming that the '20 Black vote share in GA hit its lowest level since at least '06. They were wrong.
The black vote share actually increased over 2016. The electorate, overall, was the most diverse in the history of GA. It was the white vote share that hit a new low point, yet NYT didn't mention that.
How did they reach this incorrect conclusion? They excluded the roughly 8% of Georgians who didn't identify a race when they registered to vote...
Some have suggested that the driving force behind the GA suburbs going blue was white voters switching from Trump in '16 to Biden in '20. And yes, that was a factor, but likely not nearly as significant as has been suggested. Some evidence...
Here's a breakdown of the suburban vote in Georgia over the last 3 cycles. Note that Black, Asian, and Latino voters all increased their electorate shares substantially over '16, collectively by 3.7 pts.
Meanwhile, white non-college voters saw their vote share plummet from 2016 by a whole 5 points (that's incredible). White college voters increased slightly as a share of the electorate. Fewer white non-college suburban voters cast a ballot in GA this year than did in '16.
Only Democrats would self-flagellate quite this much, having won the national popular vote by historic margins, held onto the House despite a severe pro-GOP gerrymander, and holding a chance to get to 50 seats in the Senate, a constitutional gerrymandered body.
Yes, we must learn from every election, and there are lots of lessons to learn from this one, but from the post-election takes one would think Democrats lost in a landslide. This is presumably due to the shifting frame of expectations from polls which were likely never accurate.
The polls said Dems would win in a landslide up and down the ballot. The election night results looked like the opposite was happening. Neither were accurate gauges of reality. Look at the results in the context of history, not expectations.