Thread by @gelliottmorris

It's early in GA, but the NYT needles are pretty good. Plus: AP Votecast has Trump's approval in GA down since Nov; polls were good in the general; and the $2k checks and Trump call could be big factors. I'm happy if I'm a Dem, but Atlanta results could tip the scales.

It is worth noting that the average shift since November in counties that are 100% reporting (per the NYT) is about two percentage points toward Democrats. I'm not expecting Ossoff/Warnock to win by _that_ much, but directionally this is often a good indicator.

I am only here for the runoff fam

https://twitter.com/baseball_johhny/status/1346627021514924034?s=20

I prefer blog threads to Twitter tbh

gelliottmorris.substack.com/p/georgia-runo…

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1346627756017258496?s=20

Basically, all the data we have indicate that Democrats are doing better than they did in November... when they won... sooo...

Turnout so far is down in Republican areas, by about 10-15 points. If that's true in Atlanta, Dems still win — but a bigger gap could be bad news.

It'll all come down to turnout. But I'm not seeing much room for a GOP surprise at this point...

The reason I keep saying that we need to wait for results in and around Atlanta is because the groups that live there (col whites, black voters) are under-represented in other parts of the state. If they have a turnout problem we won't know until we get ATL.

Basically, if Atlanta is anything like this, Mitch McConnell is now the minority leader

The first heavily-Democratic county, Macon County, has fully reported its results. Dems are doing about four points better than in November and turnout is better than in heavily-Republican counties.

This picture is getting clearer and clearer, folks.

Getting some more returns in Atlanta now, it looks like metro turnout will be about 90% of November 2020 turnout. That's better than the 85% turnout in more Republican areas. That's a GOP turnout problem folks, and frankly, it's hard to get around.

i believe we have seen the requisite amount, folks

The optimistic case for the GOP is that they do well enough with suburban, college-educated whites that live just outside Atlanta to swing the race by a hair. But while we don't have a _ton_ of data there, what we have so far hasn't surprised any of the models I'm looking at

Having really strong "Biden on Nov 3 waiting for ATL early votes" vibes right now. (FWIW, those votes are not hard to extrapolate)

In counties that are 95%+ reporting, Democrats are doing about 2 points better than they did in November. Again, just a benchmark, but that hasn't really changed all night, and my strong belief is that it very probably won't change by enough for Perdue or Loeffler to win

Folks, it's over. We have enough returns to project that both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will win their Senate runoffs in Georgia, giving Democrats control of the US Senate.

I have been kindly asked to clarify that this is my view and not my employer's

tough but fair

There is a disconnect somewhere between the GA SoS and election nerds on one side, and many cable shows on the other. The former group is saying there are 170-200k votes left in heavily D DeKalb county, the latter says 130k. 1/2

2/2 130k is very likely too low (AKA wrong), which I know mainly because the GA voting data chief says so!

https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/1346660118079950848?s=20

For the many of you that are asking: yes, I'm confident in the Ossoff call. The statistics are very, very clear on the Dem advantage in Nov -> now shifts for both in-person and early votes. The writing is on the wall. We're only waiting for the networks to realize it too.

I think I've said all there is to say at this point. The only thing we're waiting on is for election officials to count the ballots.

I'm going to close my laptop now and go back on my Twitter break to focus on writing my book. See y'all again soon.