As of Monday, more people – 2,337,477 – have officially voted in the second round of the Georgia Senate than in any other second round in Georgia’s history. This is a significant milestone, considering that the previous eight run-off elections were all low participation. But it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about who will win this year’s races.
For example, we do not know how these 2.3 million voters voted (although the turnout numbers are released daily, no actual election results are released until the polls close at 7 pm in the east of January 5). And since Georgia does not register voters by party, we don’t know whether those voters are disproportionately Democratic or Republican.
We Does has some clues about who voted thanks to the demographic information in the electoral file: namely, the race of voters. Voters so far in Georgia are 55% non-Hispanic whites, 32% non-Hispanic blacks and 13% other races (or of unknown race). It is a more diverse constituency than at this point in the general election, when, according to the New York Times / Upshot Nate Cohn, less than 30 percent of the first voters were black. At first glance, this may seem like a good omen for Democrats, given its strength with black voters. And there are other pink signs for Democrats in the early voting data as well, such as a lower turnout in two heavily republican parliamentary districts in northern Georgia.
But none of that will matter if hordes of white and Republican voters in northern Georgia vote on election day, which is very possible. Potentially millions of people have yet to vote, and since the type of person who votes early is different from the type of person who votes on election day, these voters can completely change the face of the electorate. (In fact, more than 975,000 Georgians voted on election day in November, and President Trump won 60% against 38% of them. The black portion of the electorate ended up falling below the black portion in the initial November vote, too.) Saying, no count your chickens before they hatch and do not form an opinion on who will win Georgia based on the early vote.
The only thing that the early vote data tells us for sure is that many people are voting (including almost 80,000 who did not vote in the November election!). As mentioned, the 2.3 million Georgians who have voted so far exceed the 2,137,956 who have voted in total in the second round of the 2008 State Senate, which held the previous record for highest turnout in a second round. (Georgia has held eight runoffs between a Democrat and a Republican since the state enacted runoffs in 1968.) As a result, participation in the runoff will be finally 32 percent of eligible voters (as estimated by Michael McDonald of the University of Florida) and 47 percent of the number of people who voted in the regular Senate race in the general election.
Participation in Georgia’s second round reached a record
Three ways to measure participation in all runoff elections in Georgia
| Cycle | Office | Outflow result | Participation in participation in November | Share of qualified voters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | US Senate * | 2,337,477 | 47% | 32% |
| 2008 | United States Senate | 2,137,956 | 57 | 34 |
| 2008 | Public Service Commission | 2,010,329 | 56 | 32 |
| 2018 | State Secretary | 1,473,904 | 38 | 20 |
| 2018 | Public Service Commission | 1,465,820 | 38 | 20 |
| 1992 | United States Senate | 1,253,991 | 56 | 26 |
| 1992 | Public Service Commission | 1,159,605 | 57 | 24 |
| 2006 | Public Service Commission | 215,092 | 11 | 4 |
| 1998 | Public Service Commission | 114,343 | 9 | two |
And, of course, attendance will end up being much greater than that, considering that election day is still a week away. Consider that at this point in the general election, 3,028,676 people had voted, which was about three-fifths of the final turnout, according to www.georgiavotes.com, an unofficial vote tracking website that uses publicly available data from the secretary of State. If this pattern continues for the second round (a big if, considering that the early voting period was interrupted at Christmas), participation in the second round could be around 3.8 million. That is more than half of qualified voters and more than three quarters of participation in the general election – both of which would be records.
Again, it is tempting to conclude that that ridiculously high turnout could favor Democrats. As my colleague Geoffrey Skelley and I wrote last month, participation always drops dramatically from the general election for the second rounds in Georgia, and black voters are disproportionately likely to stay home when that happens. As a result, Republicans improved their margins in the general election in seven of Georgia’s previous eight second rounds. But this run-off, with its unprecedented risks, looks like it will fall far less than it did in the past – so perhaps the political axiom that Republicans always do better in run-offs is not true.
On the other hand, a small drop is still a drop, so perhaps Republicans will still increase their share of votes – just less than they would in a low-participation scenario. And because Republican candidates performed 1 to 2 percentage points better than Democratic candidates in the regular and special Senate elections in November, the Republican Party would still win the second round, even if the margins remained exactly the same. (In other words, Democrats are those who need to improve their performance, something that only happened in a second round in Georgia’s history: an obscure 1998 special election for public service commissioner.)
And while conventional wisdom holds that high participation helps Democrats, this is not necessarily true – as we just saw in the 2020 election, where Republicans have often improved their previous margins and won many important contests in the largest participation elections in more than a century. So, again, the safest conclusion to be drawn from these early voting numbers is that either party could benefit. We’ll know which one next week.
Geoffrey Skelley contributed research.