Runoff Wrapup

Numbers and Some Thoughts About Tuesday

By Tom McMahan

So, neither the runoff, Congressional nor State Senate, went as we had hoped. The State Senate runoff was always a mountain probably too high to climb in a short time, although a serious health concern with Republican Lanny Thomas did cause a brief flurry of attention in that race. As I’ll show, Jack Zibluk managed to move the needle significantly there, too.

You’ve probably seen or heard some of this stuff by now. Let’s start with the comparison to Tuesday (Congressional) and 2024 (Presidential).

These comparisons are informative and encouraging, but they have a little bit of an apples-to-oranges flavor to me. One is Presidential, the other Congressional. This next one, on the other hand, is the one that should have Georgia Republicans really concerned, and Georgia Democrats hopeful:

The first CD-14 election was in 2012. For the first decade, CD-14 bounced between R+50 when ill-funded, poorly organized Democratic campaigns challenged Republicans, and R+100 when we couldn’t even field a candidate at all. As of Tuesday night, it’s R+12, and those lines have been on converging trajectories due to better candidates, better party organization, better funding, Republican extremism, and Republican gerrymandering, where they’ve had to “Democratize” the 14th a bit to try and hold onto other heavily gerrymandered districts.

R+12 is a hell of a long way from R+100 in the space of one decade, or R+50 in the space of 6 years. The Republican advantage was more than cut in half just this week. As the southern end of the District continues swinging rapidly Democratic, and our northern end has become better organized while undergoing a slower Democratic shift if it’s own, those two lines will continue to converge. They converged noticeably just in the last month. (Roll over map for specific results)

Of course, the district is still majority Republican, as this precinct map from Tuesday shows. But the blue areas are growing, not just in the south, but in Whitfield and Floyd, while the red is “draining” more noticeably now in places like the Chattanooga Metro counties: (NOTE: The precinct map is an older one; there are small discrepancies in Paulding, Floyd, and Chattooga)

As we get closer to achieving 50-50, each percent we claw back will be harder, will take more organization, effort, money, etc. But a “bluing” north Georgia spells political doom for the Republican majority of this state that has existed for over 20 years now, and it’s already spelling doom for its more extremist elements. Think of what was accomplished in this past special election cycle:

1. Dalton’s City Council is either majority Democratic now or Democratic adjacent (depending upon how non-partisan candidates view themselves).

2. Both Dalton and Rome now have some of the most Democratic heavy precincts in the state, and if Dalton’s Hispanic population begins to emerge as a Democratic bloc of voters, the change we’re seeing above will just accelerate that much more.

3. We’ve shed ourselves of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colton Moore as representatives.

4. We are in a great position to help win statewide offices in November and re-elect Senator Ossoff.

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A note on turnout: Overall turnout was between 20-25% for the special primary and runoff. Not good, certainly, but it’s typically better than what you would see in almost any other special election. It’s a weird time of the year for elections, many people aren’t paying attention, and with everyone existing in their own bubble now, no one single, direct way to grab people’s attention.

The primary elections in May will have similar turnouts, maybe a little higher, and then November we can expect around 40-50% turnout. And yes, those are pretty normal percentages for gubernatorial year elections.

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On the State Senate front, Jack Zibluk ran a very good race, and is to be commended for that. What was an R+58 district was reduced to a R+37 one, and we deprived the Senate Republicans of one additional vote in the recently concluded Assembly session.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and let’s keep things rolling through the year. On to November!