Steady Thursday Progress for Warnock
The mix of counties looks roughly proportional to the first time early voting happened in that you'd predict a 30% black electorate with these #'s from each county and you'd predict a +1 D/R edge. That compares to 29%/+1% last time.
But what you're actually seeing is a 32% black electorate (and I don't expect it to go down based on what I'm seeing/hearing for the last day) and a +7% edge for D/R. And again I'd expect that to more or less hold steady as well.
That all adds up to a +238k vote bank for Warnock.
That's the green line in this graph I've been compiling by day. You can see the slope for this week on that green line is pretty steady - after a huge Monday Warnock added around +22k each of the last few days. So if that happens today he'd be at +260k which is actually +5k bigger vote edge than he had in the general on what will likely be around 1.9mm votes, or nearly 600k fewer votes.
So can Walker make that up? I don't think so and here's why. Start with the +238k that Warnock banked as of Thursday's voting, there are 1.63mm voters left who voted in all 4 of the prior elections = 2022 General, 2021 Runoff, 2020 General, 2018 General. That includes a lot of people that will likely be standing in line to vote right now on Friday or return an absentee ballot. They are a good proxy for what's left - they won't all vote, some less frequent voters will vote, but as you move below 4/4 prior participation runoff voting just really drops off.
41% of 4/4 "super" voters have cast an early vote, and it quickly drops to only 18% of 3/4, and <10% of 1-2/4 and 0% of non-voters (actually 9k people who didn't vote in either of the prior big 4 have voted, but that's out of 2.25mm total).
So, that 4/4 remaining super voter number is a good proxy. And those voters are 22% black. When Walker racked up a big election day of around -217k, it was 21% black on about 1.4mm votes. I think after Friday's votes you'll have a pool of the most likeliest voters left with similar black #'s but it will be smaller than the 1.4mm from election day.
So while it's certainly possible for Walker to win, what we're seeing is a very strong early vote period for Warnock and a pool of the most likely voters who are left who don't seem big enough to overcome it. I'm sympathetic to an argument that some Republicans might be waiting for election day, even those who voted early last time (lines are long), but I know there are some Dems that fall into that boat too.
Once we get the final #'s in for early vote we'll do some deeper what's left analysis over the weekend or Monday.