GA Early Voting Update 10/31
Two big new polls: NYT (whose pollster previously showed a national R+4 generic ballot) shows Warnock up 49-46. The AJC poll shows Warnock tied at 45, and shows Kemp leading 51-44. I’ve had my issues with the AJC polling. They had a huge miss in the ‘21 mayoral race and their old polling (from 2018), while overall accurate, was criticized for not being weighted on education and I believe they’ve overcompensated by making their poll have way too much non-college (and high school only) and within that group making it too white. Thus, a +10 Republican electorate in their likely voter sample, compared to the NYT LV sample which shows a +1 Republican electorate. One thing of note about both polls: they show the black vote consolidating behind Democrats, unlike Insider Advantage and others who have shown Walker getting 20% or more of the black vote, which I don’t believe will happen.
On to voting! A shoutout to the late Cabral Franklin who helped spur Sunday voting from the 2014 coordinated campaign. Though turnout was low, it was a huge Democratic blowout. We’re now just shy of 1.7mm votes, about 26k yesterday. My numbers show that Democrats won them by around +10k, along with Saturday fully wiping out 5 weekdays of Republican gains from week 2. Dems now lead the early vote by +73k votes. Historically the final week (particularly the final two days) has been pretty good for Democrats. The early+18 vote is now up to a +6k 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 +27k for Democrats, which is about a 9% win with that group. Demographic changes in Georgia are and continue to be positive, so this shouldn’t surprise anyone but is maybe not factored into as much analysis as it should be. Hard to say.
Here is how things compare to 2020 on roughly the same voting day: Now, 1.7mm votes in at 30% black and 57% white, with a 52% Democratic electorate by modeled score (tuned to generic Democrat). Then, 3.0mm votes in at 29% black and 58% white, with a 52% Democratic electorate tuned to expected Biden vote.
Points of strength for Democrats: 40% of black 2018 voters have already voted vs only 36% of whites/overall. 57% of “Strong” partisans (based on primary voting history) from ‘18 have voted already, vs only 46% for Republicans.
Point of strength for Republicans: They are slightly over-performing modeled support scores with voters who weren’t absentee by mail voters in ‘21. That includes advance in person voters, election day voters, and non-voters. However that over-performance comes entirely from returning 2018 voters. We know that the real difference between ‘18 and ‘21 runoff voters accrued heavily to Democrats. So far, Republicans don’t seem to be finding a lot of new voters that weren’t in that ‘21 turnout surge, while Democrats are still waiting for some of our own surge voters from that runoff to show up.
We’ll be at least at 4.1mm voters, still expecting a high of around 4.5mm. We’ll see what turnout looks like for the rest of the week!