What’s the key to a Senate runoff win? Democrats hope to gain votes south of Atlanta
Democratic operatives see their ability to improve turnout among Black voters in pockets of south and west Georgia as key to Raphael Warnock’s success in Tuesday’s runoff election for the U.S. Senate.
Warnock, who largely matched his 2021 performance in the Atlanta metro area this November, saw his numbers lag in outstate counties compared to his last race. The Democratic incumbent finished 37,675 votes ahead of Herschel Walker last month, falling just seven-tenths of a point short of the 50% + 1 necessary to avoid the runoff.
Cyrus Garrett, a Democratic operative who is working with outside groups in the state and directed the South for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, said the dropoff was likely the result of two factors: Fewer candidate visits to downstate areas and an impression held by some Black voters that Walker couldn’t possibly win.
“There was a lack of presence of showing up and there was also a feeling that this is kind of metro Atlanta Warnock and metro Atlanta [Stacey] Abrams and our issues aren’t as front and center to some of those folks,” said Garrett. “The funny thing is that Herschel Walker is such a historically bad candidate that a lot of those people didn’t show up the first time around, because … there was some disbelief that he could win.”
In Muscogee County, Warnock performed just under 1 percentage point worse than in his 2021 runoff against Kelly Loeffler. But in rural Stewart County, he was 3.5 points off his 2021 finish, in Terrell County, he ended up 2.5 points behind that marker and in Talbot County, Warnock was 2 points off his pace.
In Bibb County, Warnock fell 1.6 points short of his victory percentage against Loeffler.
And across the state to the eastern side, in Liberty County, Warnock’s finish this year was more than 2 points worse than last year.
A Warnock campaign official noted that comparisons between the 2021 runoff and 2022 general election should consider that a Libertarian candidate made this November’s contest a three-person race, potentially peeling away support from either of the top-two candidates.
Yet in Fulton County, Warnock actually exceeded his 2021 percentage by a point. And in DeKalb County, another Democratic Party bastion in the most populous region, the senator met his 2021 vote benchmark even while competing against a third party candidate.
“There was some tapering off outside of Atlanta. In the southeast of the state, the turnout levels didn’t perform at the same levels,” said Garrett.
A coalition of Democratic groups on the ground – including Majority Forward, America Votes, Progress Georgia and Black 2 The Future – took note of the areas of slight contraction and have been working to make up the difference with an aggressive door-knocking campaign.
Majority Forward and America Votes have hit 3.1 million doors in Georgia with in-person conversations or literature drops and plan to reach 4 million by Tuesday. By Friday, Warnock will have held 10 events in southern Georgia since the runoff, according to a campaign tabulation provided to McClatchyDC.
“Warnock ran the numbers up in metro Atlanta,” noted Danny Glover, a Macon-based political organizer. “However in order to win this runoff he has to do the same in the places he’s ignored since the last runoff: Columbus, Macon, Augusta and Albany. Remember when I talked about those areas being fickle?”
Walker’s path to victory is to boost his margins in exurban counties north of Atlanta as well slightly lifting his support in the vast majority of Georgia’s rural red counties, where he marginally improved on former President Donald Trump’s 2020 totals.
“You may say, ‘that doesn’t matter, they’re rural.’ The problem is Georgia has 159 counties, so when you add up all of those margins, that makes a difference,” said Stephen Lawson, a Republican strategist working on behalf of Walker’s super PAC. “That’s the opportunity, I think, that’s in front of Herschel, is to really run up the score in those places.”
While Warnock rallied with former President Barack Obama in Atlanta Thursday, Walker campaigned before a much smaller crowd in Columbus.
Walker will likely be dependent on an Election Day surge to overtake Warnock, who appears to have banked a significant advantage during the early voting period, which concludes Friday. Most analysis of the early vote data shows higher overall turnout in Democratic areas, with Black voters accounting for a bigger share of the early votes than at this point ahead of the general election.
African-Americans made up 27% of Georgia’s vote in the 2020 general election and 28% in the 2021 Senate runoffs, when control of the chamber was on the line.
That similar urgency has dissipated somewhat, given that Democrats will run the U.S. Senate next year regardless of Tuesday’s outcome in Georgia.
But Garrett said focus groups have shown that it’s young Black voters who are turning out for the runoff out of sheer embarrassment over Walker, whose jumbled syntax and unusual pronouncements on the campaign stump have left even some Republicans wanting. Walker has also been dogged by allegations that he paid for the abortions of former lovers, abused a former girlfriend and that his primary residence is still in Texas.
“They didn’t believe that this guy who could barely put a sentence together could actually win,” Garrett said. “Now we have a whole bunch of people who are like, ‘OK, I’m making sure this time I show up and vote.’”
This story was originally published December 2, 2022 at 11:33 AM.
