I’ve written quite a few diaries about the Senate runoffs in Georgia that include sentences like “If you can, please chip in a few bucks for Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock and some of their key allies in Georgia via ActBlue!” Sometimes, this is met with comments like these:
Money doesn’t mean jack shit. Jaime Harrison and Sarah Gideon proved that.
MORE, MORE, MORE! We saw what hundreds of millions of dollars got us 2 months ago. Hopefully they're will be a better return here but I'm not counting on it.
And there is of course truth to that. Quite a few Democratic Senate candidates raised lots of money and still lost on November 3. But I think there are some key differences between those races and the runoffs in Georgia tomorrow, that will make donations a lot more effective in the latter:
Top of the ticket
The top of the ticket usually gets by far the most attention of any race, and that was true in November with Trump vs Biden in the presidential election. Voters are a lot more receptive towards information about the runoff races than they were before November 3.
In nearly all battleground Senate races, the senatorial results were close to the presidential results, Senate candidates were generally unsuccessful to move the needle relative to the top of the ticket. The big exception is Susan Collins in Maine, but she spent decades building her brand — something money can’t buy.
Purple state
Democrats donated a lot of money to some senate candidates in ruby red states. But no matter how much we hate MitchMcConnell, no campaign was going to beat him. The same would have been true for Georgia some years ago, but a lot of work investment in the years prior has turned the state purple and there is a way for Democrats to win statewide.
Target audience
As a simplification, there are seven types of voters:
- Those who always vote, and always vote Democratic
- Those who always vote, and always vote Republican
- Those who always vote, and sometimes vote Democratic/sometimes vote Republican
- Those who sometimes vote, and always vote Democratic when they vote
- Those who sometimes vote, and always vote Republican when they vote
- Those who sometimes vote, and sometimes vote Democratic/sometimes vote Republican
- Those who never vote
Three of these types, those in italics, are basically immune to election campaigning. If a campaign wants to move significant numbers, it needs a big target audience. In the Georgia runoffs, Democrats have an unusually large group of people who only vote sometimes, but vote Democratic when they vote. Historically, Democratic voters have turned out far worse than Republican voters in Georgia’s runoff elections. Additionally, there have been many recently registered voters who heavily skew Democratic, who are also not in the habit of voting in every election.
And it’s the combination of these three factors that have me convinced that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock can use massive resources a lot better than other senatorial candidates in this cycle. It’s not that they’re better candidates. It’s that they have an unusually large target audience, people care about their race because it’s at the top of the ticket now and moving a couple of points will actually be the difference between winning and losing.
And that’s the reason, I’ll write this again: If you can, please chip in a few bucks for Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock and some of their key allies in Georgia via ActBlue!
Do you want to know more about helping Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win their runoff elections? Check out the diary Ho ho how we are going to win the GA runoffs over Christmas — a (nearly) complete guide.