Anonymous ID: 75d458 Jan. 1, 2021, 6:43 a.m. No.12266301   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Early Voting May Not Lead to Dem Wins in Georgia

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/voting-georgia-perdue-loeffler/2021/01/01/id/1003889/

 

At least 2.6 million voters have already cast ballots in Georgia's Senate runoff races, but that won't necessarily translate to wins for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, according to a new analysis.

 

Voting started on Dec. 14 for the upcoming runoff races on Jan. 5 pitting Ossoff against GOP Sen. David Perdue and Warnock against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, and the numbers of early voters have already set a record for a runoff race in Georgia, reports The Washington Post.

 

But even with the Black voter turnout being at a larger proportion, indicating a possible slight lead for the Democrat candidates, the early vote data isn't capturing all voters.

 

Normally, mostly older voters, military, people overseas, and strong partisans tend not to vote by mail or early, but the pandemic and absentee voter expansions are leading more people to vote early. This makes it hard to determine who hasn't voted yet, or how many more people will still cast ballots.

 

For example, in 2016, the Election Day voters were underestimated in Iowa after absentee votes lead many people to believe that Hillary Clinton was going to win over Donald Trump, notes the Post.

 

In addition, historical trends may not hold through the election. In Florida, Republicans historically vote more by mail, but after President Trump attacked mail-in voting, many Republicans chose to vote in person. The historical trends, though, had led many to think the Florida race was going to be closer than it was.

 

With the ballots in Georgia coming in early, nobody really knows who the voters chose, even while their political affiliations are known. Democrats are losing some support from Hispanic voters and potentially from Black men, but are gaining support from white voters who have college degrees.

 

The early voting numbers shouldn't be discounted, but care must be taken when dissecting what they mean.

 

"The next time you read somewhere that Republicans need X percent of the early vote to be white so they can win, or that Democrats need Y percent of mail-in votes to come from voters under the age of 30, remember that there is a lot we don’t know about early vote data," the Post analysis concludes.