Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays,…

As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context

With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days

The Dem strength is mainly if not entirely due to a stronger Black turnout. This has always been the obvious way for Dems to improve their standing, given relatively weak Black turnout in Nov., and while there aren't any guarantees it sure seems like it's on track to materialize

Of course, the composition of the electorate is only one variable. Voter preference is more important than turnout. After all, Ossoff ran net-2 pts behind Biden. Maybe even more Biden vtrs will vt Rep. downballot, whether in hope of divided gvt or bc attacks on Dems

And the early vote is only one element of the composition of the electorate. Perhaps the GOP will fare much better on Election Day than they did in the general. Maybe Election Day will be a larger share of the vote (perhaps we should expect that, given holidays). We don't know

But what I can say is that *if* the Dems were on track to increase the Black share of the electorate by a few points, and in doing so nudge Warnock over the top and Ossoff into a deadheat if preferences were unchanged, that this is what I would have guessed it might look like

I can also say, at this point fairly definitively, that the Ds will come out of the advanced vote with a more favorable *electorate* than the adv. vote in the general. Now the GOP can beat it back on eday, of course. But it will factor into interpreting results on Election Night

Among Times/Siena poll respondents from Sept/Oct, Biden led 56-36 among voters who have now voted in the runoff. He led 51-40 among those who had voted by an equivalent point in the general election

Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday

More from Nate Cohn

More from Politics

You May Also Like