The Georgia Senate Runoffs were on Tuesday

I wanted to do a follow-up on the runoffs before I started on other articles to hold myself accountable. I started the previous article with a paragraph about why I was skeptical of Warnock and Ossoff’s chances, obviously that didn’t come to fruition (Thank God). My belief was based on past elections, the down-ballot Democrats mostly underperforming Biden, and that a majority of Americans want a split Government. I did add a final caveat that Warnock and Ossoff were able to control the narrative around the election, but only because of a Twitter Gift from Trump (Give People $2000, instead of agreed upon $600), and political malfeasance from Mitch McConnell (taking the incredibly unpopular opinion of blocking the $2000).

I also mentioned my belief that “thousands of Georgia Ballots that will vote for the Ossoff/Perdue Race and leave the Warnock/Loeffler Race blank and vice versa”. It’s impossible to get the exact number, but you can get a minimum amount by summing all of the precincts with more Warnock vs Loeffler votes than Ossoff vs Perdue votes, and all the precincts with more Ossoff vs Perdue votes than Warnock vs Loeffler votes. I don’t have a good enough computer to do that, but I can do a county-level analysis.

At least 719 people voted in the Warnock and Loeffler race and not in the Ossoff vs Perdue race, and 660 people voted for the Ossoff/Perdue race and not in the Warnock/Loeffler race. It’s probably at least 3x or 4x this amount. But I was wrong that it could sway the election. The Senate races ended up not being nearly that close.

I then talked about how the polls may actually be right this time, because Trump isn’t on the ballot, and mentioned one of the five possible reasons why Trump might outperform the polls. Funny enough, the polls were right with Trump not on the ballot, but it still doesn’t answer why polls were off. BUT, Georgia polls were good in 2020 for the Presidential Election. So we still don’t really know.

Recap of Data we have from Georgia Runoffs (The Good Stuff)

The major thesis was that I thought January would look more like Biden’s coalition than Ossoff’s coalition, which ended up being mostly correct. In Atlanta Metro, both Ossoff and Warnock were either closer to Biden’s margin or exceeded Biden’s margin in those areas. Here are the direct comparisons in a Table (it’s not a great visualization). Warnock outperformed Biden in Atlanta Metro and increased the Vote Share of it. A great sign for 2022 for him.

The story of the election should be that Rural Blue Counties shifted more to Ossoff and Warnock. Ossoff/Warnock did slightly worse than Biden, but they both outperformed Ossoff Round 1. That was offset by the drop in turnout in the big red counties, from 25.25% of the electorate to 24% of the electorate, and Warnock cut the margins down Vote Share wise too.

The Conclusion being that Democratic Counties went from being 52.36% of the Votes for Biden to 54.17% AND Ossoff and Warnock had better margins in those counties.

I’ll end this by promoting a really useful map by @JMilesColeman on Twitter, it really surprised me that Biden did best in the urban centers while Warnock and Ossoff did better sporadically around the state. But one explanation that comes immediately to mind is that Trump is able to really connect with rural voters and alienate urban voters (actual voters who live in urban centers, and not just a nickname for Black voters like Republicans use it, especially since Trump does a bit better with Black Men.) And 2020 was all about Trump.