Georgia Early Voting Data Makes Everything as Clear as Red Clay

For those of us who have been obsessing over the polls for the last four months—checking the roundups at 538 and RealClear like they’re last night’s box scores—there’s a whole new set of data points to dissect with all the faith of a medium finding meaning in tea leaves. And like those remnants of a tasty, brewed beverage, we can find whatever we want.

I’m a resident of the great state of Georgia, which means I’ve long since forgotten what kinds of things people might advertise during a college football game in a non-presidential election year. So I’m most focused on how our things in our reddish-purple state are shaping up so far.

And yes, Georgia is still more of a red state than a blue one; it’s just a red state that tends to reject Trump and other completely looney candidates, unless you’re talking about the northwest part of the state who keeps embarrassing us with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’d cede that region to Alabama if weren’t so god damned majestic.

Fortunately, the website Georgia Votes, which calls itself “a fun project,” has helpfully allowed all of us armchair political scientists to dig right into the data. We’re working off a brand-new but still very gerrymandered map that complicates things a bit—one redistricted to appease federal judges without ceding any power to the Democrats—but we’ll muddle through.

Here are some raw facts sure to both freak you out and help you to sleep at night. Sorry in advance.

Good News for Donald Trump

• Early turnout is robust, to say the least, and it’s on pace to eclipse 2020 levels particularly in Republican districts. Among the nine right-leaning districts, we’ve already seen an average of 85 percent turnout compared to early voting in 2020. In Democratic districts, voting has only hit 73 percent of 2020 levels so far. In fact, the biggest increase is in the most solidly red 14th district represented by Greene, which is already at 97 percent of 2020’s early voting totals.

• Of the 3.2 million votes so far, a whopping 600,000 were cast by people who didn’t vote in Georgia in 2020. That includes people who moved to the state, new voters and registered voters who didn’t show up last time. If a Trump victory depends on low-propensity voters, that pool might contain the votes he needs.

• Most encouraging for Republicans may be the raw numbers of early voters in Republican-leaning districts, which are averaging 244,000 per district compared to 215,000 per Democratic-leaning district. My district, the 4th, represented by Hank Johnson and estimated at D+27, has had the lowest turnout compared to the last election at only 64 percent with just 192,000 voters.

Good News for Kamala Harris

• As my colleague Ross Pomeroy pointed out yesterday, “women are outvoting men by a sizable 10.2 percent gap in the six states that break down voting by gender (CO, GA, ID, MI, NC, VA).” In Georgia, the gap is even bigger at 11.9 percent. Even MTG’s district has a 9 percent advantage for women. Right here in the 4th, it’s an eye-popping 17 percent difference. The early voting gap was a similar 12.3 percent in 2020, but Harris is expected to get a bigger share of women’s votes next week.

• While 8.8 percent of early voters in right-leaning districts voted on election day last time, only 5.5 percent of those in left-leaning districts did, meaning that some of the Republican gain is just an expected shift to early voting—something the Republican Party has been encouraging, even if its leader sometimes forgets that.

• There may be a realignment of the electorate happening, but that doesn’t completely negate the continuing demographic changes that first gave Georgia Democrats hope for the future. While 61 percent of early voters who have voted before are non-Hispanic white, only 53 percent of new voters are. Almost a third of Asian early voters and more than a third of Hispanic early voters didn’t vote in Georgia in 2020.

As I said, you can take what you want from the data, but plenty of big unknowns remain. Voting by mail is way down from 2020, during those pre-vaccine Covid days, so comparisons to that election are limited. Will all those metro Atlanta vote-by-mail voters show up on election day or sit this one out? Is the surge in early in-person voting in Republican districts a sign of Trump enthusiasm or just a shift in behavior? Blue and red districts had an identical 18.7 percent of its early votes from first-time voters, but they account for 5,000 more new voters per Republican district than Democratic one.

Overall, the early voting data we have so far mostly confirms that Georgia is once again a toss-up. Despite every reason that voting for Trump seems unfathomable to me personally, despite the noticeable decline in Trump yard signs when I drive around the state, despite the state’s population boom that took us over 11 million people last year… we still could have an ex-President asking for a few thousand votes two weeks from now. Or a heartbreaking result that has me questioning my own sanity. Here’s hoping that “blue wall” up north holds.