Report Card
Now that all the votes have been counted, a quick report card for my observations and predictions.
Prediction: Warnock wins the early vote by +274k Actual: Warnock actually rolled up a +321k victory in the early vote. Directionally correct, just undershot a little. Also some friends of the newsletter that relied more on the party support model thought it was in the ~150k range. Grade B+
Prediction: Above 3.3mm total turnout starts to break back to Warnock Actual: We don’t know for certain, but I stand by this prediction. One thing I think we can mostly retire is saying that “above X” Republicans win. This is two Senate runoffs in a row where election day turnout massively exceeded expectations and in both ‘21 and in ‘22 the CW was that once e-day turnout hits a certain number it’s in the bag for Republicans, and both years it was wrong. In reality, the absolute most likely to vote 1-1.2mm on election day lean pretty Republican (and I think Warnock still would barely win with that turnout) but my data showed that past that, you were about equally likely to get good news for either party in increased turnout, and probably a benefit for the Democrats as more infrequent voters are better for Dems. Grade: A
Prediction: 100% of Warnock’s victory margin will come from election day votes in core 5 metro counties Actual: Yes, it did, which is why I said that on election night, Walker taking the lead (or Warnock being close) wasn’t a big deal until the big counties started to report. Grade: A+
Prediction: Warnock wins by +115k Actual: Just under 97k. Grade: B
Prediction: 3.29mm total votes (from post early vote) Actual: 3.53mm votes, huge election day turnout. Early vote was not a great predictor of this. Grade: C
Prediction: Warnock at 51.7% Actual: Warnock got 51.4%. Grade: A-
Prediction: Pretty big election day for both parties, with Walker even to his General election day vote total and Warnock +10%. Actual: Huge election day turnout, Walker exceeded his vote total from the general election day by 17%, but Warnock was higher by 22%. So here’s another where I was directionally correct in that Warnock was doing even better, but it wasn’t quite the 10% advantage I thought he might get. Grade: B
More soon!