Runoff Early Turnout 11/9
Just kidding there’s no early turnout yet. But looking at what we now know, it looks like Warnock will be in just under 49.5 with Walker about a point behind. Most of the vote is counted.
Vote Mode continues to be a very underappreciated predictor of voting. I’m tracking Warnock at 67% of absentee, 53% of early in person and 41% of election day. Looking at past turnout mode, particularly the ‘21 runoff to see how someone voted could give us some good clues on who to turn out.
Just one or two more quick musings. I was a little off on Warnock - thought he’d barely clear 50. Was hoping that our downballot would do a little better. But, this is, I believe, the Republican version of 1998. A really solid performance (except at Senator, ironically) that’s helping to paper over the underlying trend in the state.
Some of the underlying trend - if my math is correct we netted a Senate seat and two state House seats. These races are much more about party support, people just don’t know a lot about these candidates. And it was post-redistricting. I honestly was worried that we might lose 5 or 6 seats in the House and have to win back some of the low hanging fruit in ‘24 instead of focus on the big potential metro opportunities that year.
But we won’t - so congrats to everyone who ran a competent campaign and won where you were supposed to. I will make one final plea today for the runoff - if you can vote in person, please do. Democratic hysteria about hand marked ballots is just that, a conspiracy theory in service of excusing prior under-performance by our heroes.
We have a mostly competent election system in this state, but absentee ballots (especially with bad Republican changes in SB 202) just have too many points of failure. If you can get out and vote in person safely, reduce the burden so someone who actually needs an absentee ballot - like a college student, or someone who is homebound - can get it instead.