ATLANTA – With Senate control at stake, Georgians are voting in significant numbers before the second round of the January 5 election.
As of Monday morning, 2.13 million voters, representing 27.5% of all registered voters in the state, had already voted in the disputes that place Republicans Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue against Democratic opponents Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. With so much at stake and a large flow of attention, publicity and funds flowing to Georgia, state voters mobilized during the early vote.
“Typically, you expect 50 percent of the general election [total] in a second round, that would be 2.5 million votes, ”said Georgia political analyst Fred Hicks. With four days left to vote in advance, plus election day attendance, it seems almost certain that Georgia will surpass historical norms for a second round.
The United States Elections Project, a nonpartisan source of information based on the University of Florida, released data until December 28. Demographic analyzes suggest that the disputes are as close as the surveys indicate.
Current research averages for FiveThirtyEight have Perdue ahead of Ossoff by the smallest of margins – 47.9% to 47.8% – and Warnock ahead of Loeffler by 1 percentage point, 48.3% to 47.3%.
Since no candidate won a 50 percent majority in the November general election, Georgia’s two Senate seats are at stake. Republicans have an elected majority of 50-48 in the Senate at the moment. The two Georgia elections will determine whether Republicans will continue to control the upper house or whether the new Biden government will be able to break a potential 50-50 legislative stalemate with the vote of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
In November, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992. This victory gave Georgia’s Democrats the hope of getting their seats in the Senate, but Biden’s narrow margin of victory – only about 12,000 votes – shows that the results of the second rounds are far from certain.
More than half of all votes cast so far in the Georgia Senate’s second rounds – 57 percent – came from voters aged 56 or over, while less than 15 percent came from voters aged 34 or under, according to statistics compiled by the US Elections Project. This is a significant change from the general election, when about 46% of all initial ballots came from voters aged 56 or over, while almost 21% came from voters aged 34 or under.
White voters voted for 55% of all initial ballots, while blacks voted for almost 32%. The total number of white voters is almost identical to the total of early votes during the general election, while the percentage of black votes rose from 27.7% in November.
“Voters so far are more ethnically diverse than Republicans would like, but they are older than Democrats would like,” said Hicks. “This is why you see Republicans pushing Georgia’s rural vote and why you see Democrats pushing digital more and where younger voters are.”
In the past few weeks, each party has brought in high-profile substitutes to join the campaign, including Biden and Harris, as well as President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and donations have arrived from across the country.
All attention to the state could be working. Almost 69,000 voters who did not vote in the general election have already voted in the second round. In elections where the margin between victory and defeat is thin, this bloc alone could determine the results and, in turn, control the Senate and the fate of Biden’s agenda.
The question for Republicans is how much Trump’s continued criticism of the electoral process will affect turnout. Trump, who is due to visit the state again on the eve of the election, has continued to make unfounded claims of electoral fraud in Georgia, attacking state officials despite the fact that Georgia has conducted several recounts that show a Biden victory. Meanwhile, Loeffler and Perdue quietly backed away from Trump’s claims; even Loeffler’s nickname for his December journey through the state – the Senate Firewall Tour – is an implicit acknowledgment of Biden’s victory, since Democratic control of the Senate would not be possible unless Trump lost in November.
“There is a very real possibility that the conversation about a fraudulent election is suppressing the marginal Republican voter,” said Hicks. “This is the crux of what I call Trump’s election dilemma: how to get Trump voters back without the Trump baggage that brought Republican voters to Biden.”
The challenge for Democrats, on the other hand, is how to attract about 100,000 voters who voted for Biden but did not vote for Ossoff. (Warnock was part of a crowded electoral field, making direct statistical comparison less accurate.) Some of these voters simply did not vote for any Senate candidate, but the question for Democrats is how to attract voters who explicitly repudiated Trump and remained loyal to Republican candidates advance the vote.
Early voting in Georgia continues until December 31. Absentee ballots must be requested by January 1. Election day is January 5. State election officials can begin processing ballots 15 days before election day, but ballots cannot be tabulated until the polls close.
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