A first look at final early voting data favors Democrats; key GOP areas lag in runoff turnout

Now that we’ve closed the books on early voting, it’s possible to begin assessing turnout in the state’s 159 counties — and there’s a little news here. I’m working on a bigger analysis of the Senate runoff data, but here’s a teaser.

It’s been fairly clear for a while that the Democrats were winning the turnout battle, but the data that became available today brings that picture into even sharper focus.

This map is intended to illustrate how each county has fared so far in the runoff with early in-person voting and mail voting versus its turnout in the same categories in the general election. The darker the green, the better a county is doing — that is, the closer it came to matching its early and mail performance in the general election.

Leading the early turnout vote so far is rural Randolph County, located hard on the Alabama line in southwest Georgia. Through the close of early voting, it had generated 2,087 early in-person and mail-in votes — 91 percent of the 2,291 early and mail votes it produced in the general election. It was one of several rural southwest Georgia counties with substantial Black populations that tilted for Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff over incumbent GOP Senator David Perdue in the November 3 general election, and all of them appear to be showing up for Round 2.

At the other end of the spectrum, 13 of the 14 counties that show up in the lightest shade on the map above went for Perdue, some of them heavily. Rural Brantley County, in southeast Georgia, gave 90.8 percent of its general election vote to Perdue, but so far has turned out only 69 percent of its early general election vote.

Also concerning for the Republicans should be uber-conservative northwest Georgia, which just sent Qanon supporter Margaret Taylor Greene to Congress, and where President Trump will make his final campaign stop for Perdue and Senator Kelly Loeffler Monday night. There, most of the more rural counties produced an early runoff turnout of less than three-fourths of their comparable general election showing, and the major population centers are clearly lagging even further behind: Floyd, at 69.8 percent; Carroll, 70 percent; Whitfield 71.4 percent, even exurban Cherokee at 67.3 percent.

For reasons that are unclear, the cluster of counties in the northeastern corner of the state — also a Republican stronghold — are performing much better than their fellow GOP counties to the west. All of them posted early in-person and mail-in votes for the runoff of at least 80 percent of their general election turnout.

Major Democratic strongholds in Metro Atlanta are doing much better in at least coming close to matching their general election performance: Fulton County came in at 79.9 percent of its general election early and mail vote showing; DeKalb, 83.9 percent; Gwinnett, 78.6 percent. Of the largest counties, only Cobb lagged the group, turning out 72.5 percent of its general election performance.

Perhaps most encouraging for the Ossoff and his tag-team partner, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, was heavily-black Clayton County. Its turnout lagged other major Democratic counties in the general election, but it seems to be trying to make up for that performance in the runoff. So far, it’s turning in one of the best performances in the state, at 85.5 percent of its early general election turnout.

None of this is predictive, of course, and Republicans typically dominate election-day voting. But there sure seems to be more good news for Ossoff and Warnock than Perdue and Loeffler in this first pass at the early-voting data.

Watch this space. More to come tomorrow or Monday.

(c) Copyright Trouble in God’s Country 2021