Looking at Local Results

The First of Three Reviews of Election 2024

By Tom McMahan, Chair

Starting today and continuing for the next 2 weeks, I will review local, state, and national election results, as well as think about ramifications and future actions we can take.

First up we’ll look at local results, and surprisingly, this is probably the brightest spot in an otherwise dark election.

Dade County results will be certified later today (11/12/2024) when 4 outstanding provisional ballots are reviewed.

You’re not going to see anything really remarkable leap out at you with the raw vote totals there. Additionally, our absentee votes were as expected (between 40-45%). Our early vote, the thing I was tracking every day, was slightly lower. I had estimated 1021 votes, we had 971 (that includes absentees), so roughly 5% off. Our election day vote was not as bad as it had been in 2020 because more Democrats have shifted back to day of voting, and it came in a few points higher than in 2020, again roughly as expected.

What maybe was surprising was that overall vote totals were up from 4 years ago, instead of being down. But you’ll notice our vote totals went up too, it’s just in the Presidential race, the Republicans went up a bit more (∆ -1.9%), but in the Congressional race, OURS went up a little bit more than that even (∆ +2.5%).

So, looking at it from across those two races and comparing D to R results from previous elections, our performance here in Dade was a small positive. We took the Republicans best shot yet, and we held our ground as the minority party.

Finally, how did our 4-county combined effort turn out? Dade pooled our financial resources with Walker, Catoosa, and Chattooga Counties and ran our own “combined campaign” here at the local level. When you compare each county’s Democratic Presidential vote change in our Congressional District over the past 2 elections, and adjust for population changes, you get the following, ranked in order from greatest Democratic vote growth to least:

1. Paulding County ————— 15.1% growth

2. Catoosa County —————--10.4% growth

3. Walker County ——————- 9.2% growth

4. Dade County ———————- 7.8% growth

5. Floyd County ———————- 6.1% growth

6. Chattooga County —————-3.3% decline

7. Whitfield County ——————3.6% decline

8. Murray County ———————4.6% decline

9. Polk County ———————— 6.3% decline

(I didn’t include the 14th CD portion of Cobb County because it’s newly added.)
It should be noted that even in counties with a “decline” their raw Democratic vote in the Presidential race increased, it just didn’t increase at the same rate as population growth. I’ll have a complete look at all Georgia counties next week, but I already know that raw increases in vote totals did NOT happen in a lot of Georgia counties. The 14th CD was a positive performer for the Democratic Party of Georgia this election, and within it, our 4 NW corner counties were towards the top.

LESSONS LEARNED

• The 4-county approach worked. It gave us the ability to reach more voters, and even though our efforts were a little rusty, it was a good first attempt, and should improve over time

• The places where we canvassed showed clear Democratic improvement

• We will need more volunteers for canvassing and phone banking next time

• We need to start canvassing earlier and not wait for the statewide campaign. I’ll talk more about the problems with the statewide campaign next week. If we start earlier, we can do more “persuasion” canvassing instead of just “Get Out the Vote” type.

• We need to add a local candidate into the mix next time (we will have Senate, House, and Assembly candidates 2 years from now). The North Dade and Sand Mountain commission and school board seats are up in 2026.