GA Early Voting Update 10/30
Some thoughts on the Warnock-Kemp voter. First, they obviously exist. A year ago, when it seemed possible that Kemp might lose a primary challenge to David Perdue, would anyone have believed that Kemp would get a higher % of the primary vote than Walker, who was functionally running unopposed? I doubt it, but exactly that did happen. Kemp got about 90k more votes in his primary than Walker. About 95% of the difference came from the 11 county Atlanta metro (as defined by the ARC). In other words, outside of these counties Kemp was about as likely as Walker to be the top vote-getter.
But inside these metro counties, strong Democratic crossover voting fueled Kemp (and Raffensperger). These same voters voted for Gary Black or a host of no-names instead of Herschel, even though it was a meaningless vote. If they are really just a bunch of Georgia football fans who love Walker, no better time than his primary to vote for him - but they didn't! Also an incredible 67% of TV Households in the Atlanta DMA didn't bother watching the UGA/UA national championship game earlier this year, so maybe for once it's Republicans who live in a bubble?
So, there's 90k Warnock/Kemp voters for you. Or about 2% of a 4mm turnout. Of course, there's likely even more that don't vote in primaries. The other thing that I hear (from Republicans) is that Abrams's problems (like a bad story about her) is going to help Walker? This fundamentally misunderstands who the Kemp-Warnock voter is.
I've done a lot of polling over the last year, particularly in competitive metro-ATL districts for candidates. I always find Warnock-Kemp voters and the story is always the same. They voted overwhelmingly in 2018 for Biden instead of Trump. Usually a majority of them have a favorable impression of Abrams. They're typically voting for Democrats in other races. They just like Kemp enough personally. Incumbent re-elections are ultimately a referendum on the incumbent and they are deciding they're keeping him, or that they haven't seen enough to fire him. Likely about 90% of this is that he stood up to Trump. And importantly they don't like Walker. So, no a bad story or feeling about Abrams's chances will not accrue to Walker. And many of these voters ALREADY voted for Kemp in '18. It's a big reason that Abrams was one of the few (only?) competitive top-of-ticket Democrats in '18 who under-performed Biden's subsequent performance. Compare Georgia to Michigan. Whitmer won by 10%, then Biden squeaked by there two years later. Here, Abrams lost by 2%, then Biden barely won. This shouldn't be a mystery to people, but apparently it is.
On to voting!
Democrats really crushed the Saturday early vote. Up to 1.6mm votes, about 100k yesterday. My numbers show that Democrats won them by around +11k, essentially wiping out 4 days of Republican gains. Dems now lead the early vote by +63k votes. If we have a strong Sunday, from a net vote perspective it will be like the (relatively) good 2nd week for Republicans never happened. Historically the final week has been pretty good for Democrats. The early+18 vote is now up to a +4k Dem win. Remember that Republicans would win the '18 voters that are still registered by about -20k votes, meaning the new voters that have turned out are +24k for Democrats, which is almost a 10% win with that group. Compared to 2020, we're running about half a point behind where we were then. This is consistent with a national environment that's a little worse than 2020, but not that much different. And with so much of the Republican vote in Georgia now coming from rural Trump surge areas (the places that didn't keep up in the runoff, which is why Warnock is even on the ballot), it's really a mystery what things will ultimately look like.