Who is voting early in Georgia Senate runoffs? Here’s a look at turnout so far
Early voting for Georgia’s runoff elections kicked off this week, and data show who is turning out.
Both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate races are headed for runoff elections in January after none of the candidates received more than 50% of the votes in the Nov. 3 general election as required by state law. The outcome of the races will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber in 2021.
First-term Republican Sen. David Perdue faces Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff for one seat, and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler faces Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock, who would be Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator if he wins, for the other.
Polling shows both sets of candidates in tight races.
Perdue is leading Ossoff by 0.1 percentage points in their race as of Wednesday, according to poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight’s average, which had shown Ossoff leading since late November. Warnock is leading Loeffler by an average of 0.3 percentage points.
Early voting for the runoffs started Monday, and the election will be held Jan. 5. Turnout has already surged, surpassing the number of votes cast at the start of the November election on the first day of early voting, according to The New York Times.
As of Thursday, more than 914,000 votes had been cast in the runoff, about 12% of registered voters, and more than 1.2 million have requested mail-in ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project, which tracks voting data.
Georgia doesn’t register voters by party, so early voting numbers don’t offer much insight into who the high turnout is benefiting, Axios reports. But turnout has been boosted by mail-in voting, which helped President-elect Joe Biden carry Georgia in the general election — the first time a Democrat has done so since 1992.
Here’s a look at who has voted in the runoffs as of Wednesday:
Age
Nearly half of ballots cast in Georgia’s runoffs have come from voters over age 65, according to data from the U.S. Elections project. These voters account for 420,000 of early votes, or about 46%.
Younger voters account for the smallest portion of ballots cast. Voters ages 18 to 24 make up 3.9% of the turnout and those ages 25 to 34 make up 6.3%, data show.
Voters ages 35 to 44 make up 9% of votes cast so far, and those ages 45 to 55 and 56 to 65 make up 13.6% and 20.7%, respectively.
Voters over age 65 also accounted for the highest percentage of turnout and voters age 18 to 24 for the lowest in the November election, per the U.S. Elections Project.
The two Democratic candidates are strongly favored by younger Georgia voters, while the Republicans are favored by older voters, an Emerson College poll of 605 likely voters conducted Dec. 14-16 found.
While 71% of voters ages 18 to 29 favor Warnock and 70% favor Ossoff, 59% of voters ages 65 and older favor Perdue and 60% favor Loeffler, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 points.
Race and ethnicity
Black voters have the highest turnout rate in the runoffs at 13% through Wednesday, the data show.
White residents have a turnout rate of 12.5%, Hispanic residents a turnout rate of 6%, Asian-Americans a rate of 9.3% and Native Americans 7.1%.
Black voters were a “driving national force” in Biden’s victory and played a large role in making Georgia, historically a Republican stronghold, a battleground state, the Associated Press reports. Black women, who played a large role in turning Georgia blue in the presidential race, are “critical to Democrats’ chances” of winning the runoffs, CNN reports.
More than half of ballots cast, 55%, have come from white voters. Black voters account for 32.5% of the vote, Hispanic voters 1.8%, Asian-Americans 2% and Native Americans 0.1%. Those numbers are close to being in line with turnout in the November election.
Georgia’s population is 60.2% white, 32.6% Black, 9.9% “Hispanic or Latino,” 4.4% Asian-American and 0.5% “American Indian and Alaskan Native,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
New voters
More then 24,100 voters who did not vote in the November general election have cast in-person ballots for the runoffs and more than 11,000 have had their mail-in ballots accepted, U.S. Elections Project data show.
About 2.6 million registered Georgia voters didn’t cast a ballot in November, meaning they have a turnout rate of about 0.9% for in-person voting in the runoffs and 11.3% for mail-in ballots.
Another 97,700 residents who did not vote in November have requested mail-in ballots. They account for roughly 7.6% of absentee ballots requested.
Location and method of voting
Greene County has the highest turnout rate in Georgia, at 23.3%, followed by Talbot County with 21.7%, according to the data. Pickens County has the lowest turnout rate, with 0.1%.
Greene County has a population of about 17,700, Talbot County has a population of about 6,100 and Pickens County about 32,600.
Voters in Fulton County, the state’s most populous county with more than 1 million residents, have cast the most ballots, with more than 99,000 for a turnout rate of 11.8%, followed by DeKalb County with 85,200 votes and a 14% turnout rate. DeKalb is also among the state’s most populous counties with more 759,000 residents.
The “urban/city vote” strongly favors Warnock and Ossoff, at 75% and 73%, respectively, the Emerson poll shows. Meanwhile, Loeffler and Perdue lead among rural voters with 68% and 67% of the vote, respectively.
More than 486,900 votes have been cast in person, or about 53% of turnout so far. The rest, more than 427,000 votes, have been via mail-in ballots.
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 12:56 PM with the headline "Who is voting early in Georgia Senate runoffs? Here’s a look at turnout so far."
