As promised, I took a deeper look at the two Georgia Senate runoff elections. Assuming that Biden foils the Kansas City Shuffle, Democrats need to win both Georgia races for a 50/50 split in the U.S. Senate – and thus claim the narrowest possible Senate control with VP Harris as the tie-breaker. Conversely, Republicans need to win only one of the races to give McConnell and company virtual veto power over all Democratic appointments and legislation. The stakes are high.
While there are two distinct races in Georgia, the two candidates from each party are obviously joined at the hip in the eyes of many voters. We can thus primarily focus on the political dynamics in Georgia that aren’t race-specific.
It seems clear that there are precious few minds that could actually be changed in Georgia. The state is even more polarized along party lines than the rest of the country – and that’s a significant accomplishment. Looking at the top of the last two statewide tickets (Governor in 2018, President in 2020), only one of 159 counties changed their party preference. [Washington County, with about 10K votes in 2020, saw a very narrow R win in 2018 and a very narrow D win in 2020.] As of this writing, Biden won Georgia by only about 14K votes – or about 0.3%. It’s thus also clear that the party polarization is a pretty even split.
The New Georgia Project does claim to have identified around 100K potential new voters to register ahead of the 12/7 runoff voter registration deadline. The Civics Center says that around a quarter of them are young voters who were ineligible to vote on 11/3 but will turn 18 in time to vote in the runoff. The assumption is that a vast majority of these new voters would favor Democrats and, given that about 4.9M Georgia votes were cast in 2020, a potential 2% additional votes could well make a difference.
In any case, the runoffs will be all about turnout. The problem is that, despite public confidence on both sides, no one has the slightest clue who has the upper hand.
Georgia’s Republican candidates do have a very long history of winning runoff elections. Most notably, in 1992, the popular Democratic Sen. Fowler won 49.2% of the vote in the general election, beating his Republican opponent by 6 points. However, Fowler lost the runoff 49.4% to 50.6%. That said, the 2020 election is so different on so many levels that history is likely not a valid predictor.
Will 2020 Republicans turn out without Trump at the top of the ticket? For that matter, will 2020 Democrats turn out without Trump at the top of the ticket? Will local issues overshadow control of the U.S. Senate or will it be completely the opposite? What will be the impact of the massive amounts of out-of-state money and surrogates on both sides?
It remains to be seen what involvement Trump himself will have in the Georgia runoffs. As with everything, it will be all about him either way. We know that Trump doesn’t give a crap about Senate control at this point. However, if he thinks he can claim credit for wins in Georgia, he’ll be there. If not, he’ll be occupied elsewhere. Trump’s involvement would likely motivate turnout from both parties but with the net advantage going to Republicans. While it’s unlikely that any other non-Georgia Republican could be a major factor as a surrogate, Republicans do have Karl Rove leading their fundraising parade. Despite being an asshole, he’s pretty good at that kind of thing.
Stacey Abrams will continue to play a leading role for Georgia Democrats – and she did a phenomenal job in the general election. The party will hopefully feature Barack and Michelle Obama as the external draws with Harris liberally deployed to represent the Biden administration. Biden himself might make a token appearance but, frankly, Biden’s personal involvement will have little impact on turnout and he should now focus more on governing than politics.
Individually, the two Georgia Senate races in the general election were quite different.
In the “standard” 2020 election, there were three candidates on the ballot. Perdue (R) received 49.7% of the vote. Ossoff (D) has a tough road to increase his 48.0% to a majority. While it’s likely that the bulk of the Libertarian’s 2.3% will favor Ossoff in the runoff, Ossoff really needs a sweep of those votes.
In the “special” 2020 election, there were a whopping 20 candidates on the ballot. Warnock (D) got a plurality of 32.9% and he’ll face Loeffler (R) in the runoff. While Loeffler got only 25.9%, all of the Republican candidates together got 49.2% of the vote. Democrats combined for 48.4% with 2.4% going to a smattering of other parties. Warnock also needs most of the third-party votes.
In both head-to-head races, the Republican is not only the incumbent, but the opposing Democrat starts from a vote deficit in the general election. Again, however, it will be all about turnout. If Republicans can attract the most repeat voters – as they’ve done in the past – they’ll win. If Democrats have the most repeat voters – and bring in new voters – they’ll win. If both parties produce the same voters that they did in the general election, the race could be decided by the fringe party voters. However, it’s not at all clear that these voters will make the effort to show up for either major party candidate.
I thought about trying to build a predictive model for both races, but there’s just too many variables that don’t lend themselves to analytics. Polls will continue to be conducted in Georgia but all will be worthless.
Intuitively, I’d guess that Republicans have significant advantages in both runoff races. However, since Georgia was the one state that I got wrong in the Presidential election, I’m not inclined to listen to me.
Instead, I’ll just throw some money in the general direction of Georgia and pray to whatever Gods might still care about the truly pathetic political situation that engulfs my country.
For those that might also be inclined to pitch in, I’m donating to:
- The two Democratic campaigns:
- Abrams’ organization, focused on general Democratic turnout: