Sifting through the three million early votes Georgians have cast so far in the 2024 presidential race is an exercise in political algebra and some really fuzzy math.

With two weeks of early voting now in the books, the 30 Georgia counties that sided with Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election appear to be building a significant early vote lead over the 129 counties that went for former Republican President Donald Trump four years ago — and that will almost certainly stay with him again in the current 2024 presidential battle.

This doesn’t mean that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee to succeed Biden, can count on going into the November 5th election day voting with the same kind of huge early-vote lead Biden had built up four years ago, or that Trump can bank on the massive election day turnout he got in 2020. But county-level voting trends have generally provided a decent, if rough, proxy for statewide political races.

Both Democrats and Republicans have historic advantages and disadvantages that are evident in the current race. The Democratic counties — largely major urban counties in Metro Atlanta and elsewhere around the state — are home to substantially more registered voters than the GOP-dominated counties, which are largely rural but also include suburban and exurban counties with large populations.

As of close-of-voting on Sunday, the 30 Democratic counties, according to county-level voting data posted to the website georgiavotes.com, had 613,182 more registered voters than the 129 Republican counties. But Republicans do a better job of turning out their voters. Through Sunday voting, voter turnout in the GOP counties was 35.9%, versus 33.1% in the Democratic counties.

As the final week of early voting began Monday morning, the Democratic counties had piled up 1.46 million ballots versus 1.37 million for the Republican counties, a lead of just under 100,000 and roughly double their lead at the end of the first week of early voting. But if they had matched the GOP counties’ turnout rate, they would have more than doubled their advantage.

However, even if voting continues at the current turnout rates (and if the county-level patterns are indeed a fair proxy for the Harris-Trump contest), the vice president should finish early voting and head into election day with a lead of approximately 150,000 votes — well short of the nearly 225,000-vote lead Biden held going into election day four years ago.

But she may not need as fat a cushion as Biden had in 2020. Then, huge numbers of GOP voters obviously heeded Trump’s warnings about mail and early voting and waited until election day to vote, when they swamped Biden supporters and nearly wiped out his early vote lead. That left Biden with his now famous 11,799 margin and Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. This year, a review of county-level voting trends suggests that voters in Republican counties are voting early by mail and in person, which may mean they’ll have a smaller army of committed voters left to go to the polls on November 5.

But Team Harris still faces massive problems of its own. Chief among these, the Black vote isn’t turning out at the rate a Democrat typically needs to win statewide in Georgia. As of Sunday, just 26.2% of the 2.83 million votes cast so far were by Black voters. Historically, that number needs to be at 30% or higher. This deficiency shows up clearly in comparing turnout in historically Black and Democratic urban counties with adjoining suburban, White flight counties, including:

• Heavily Black Democratic stronghold Dougherty County (Albany) had sent only 21.4% of its voters to the polls by close-of-voting on Sunday, while turnout in neighboring Lee County, which gave Trump 71.8% of its vote four years ago, was already at 36.9%;
• Richmond County (Augusta), also heavily Black and Democratic, is actually trailing its smaller White flight neighbor, Columbia County, in actual votes cast as well as the percentage of voters who have already voted. Columbia County, with fewer than 128,000 registered voters, has already cast nearly 46,000 votes; Richmond, with nearly 155,000 registered voters, has sent only 38,465 voters to the polls. Richmond’s turnout rate as of Sunday was 24.9% versus 35.9% for Columbia.
• Just as stark is the comparison between Clarke and Oconee counties. Clarke, home of the University of Georgia and historically one of the most liberal counties in the state, had cast only 24.9% of its potential votes as of close-of-voting on Sunday; the turnout rate in Oconee, meanwhile, was 47.9%.
• Down on the coast, Chatham County, a 60% Biden county in 2020, is being heavily outvoted by its Trump-friendly neighbors, Bryan and Effingham. Through the weekend, Bryan and Effingham had sent 37.5% and 32%, respectively, of their voters to the polls, while Chatham’s turnout rate stood at 28.5%.

Harris & Company will almost certainly have to close those and other gaps to have a realistic shot at winning Georgia, but there are other crosscurrents churning Georgia’s political waters that may give her a boost. She seems certain to gain ground with traditionally Republican women angry about abortion policies being forced on them by Trump and, for that matter, Governor Brian Kemp. At the same time, various polls suggest Trump is peeling away at least a slice of Black male voters. Stirring all the numbers together requires a combination of political algebra and some very fuzzy math that, so far, refuses to suggest a clear outcome. Stay tuned and keep your erasers handy.