This is your daily early voting update in Georgia, in which we will examine the early voting numbers from yesterday.
Yesterday, about 324,000 people across Georgia voted, either in-person, by mail, or by absentee drop off. This is just off the record pace set two days earlier, when 330,000 people showed up to vote in the runoff.
I want to start off by pointing out some very good news: Quite by accident, I discovered that there are about 4,000 votes in Fulton County that haven’t been included in the totals that are shown on georgiavotes.com. This is because there were three temporary voting sites that Fulton County lists separately from the overall in-person totals. This is good news, because it means that turnout in Fulton has been a bit higher than I thought it was.
As of now, 1,476,000 people have voted in the runoff. And the demographics look good for our side.
Here’s where we stand as of now with respect to total votes cast in the runoff so far:
White 54.8%
Black 32.4%
Hispanic 1.6%
Asian 1.7%
Other 9.5%
Female 55.7%
Male 44.0%
Unknown .3%
18-29 7.0%
30-39 7.8%
40-49 11.6%
50-64 31.9%
65+ 41.5%
Unknown .2%
Yesterday’s electorate was 42.2 non-white, up from 41% the previous day. And 57% of yesterday’s voters were women. Additionally, the percentage of voters under the age of 40 moved up from 14% to 14.8%. In terms of how this compares with the electorate at the same stage during the general, things look better overall, in my opinion. At that point in time the electorate was just under 30% black. This time, as you can see, the electorate so far is 32.4% black. Also, at this juncture during the general, the electorate was just under 55% female. As you can see, at this point, the electorate is almost 56% female this time around. The only thing that concerns me slightly is the fact that the average age of the electorate in the runoff so far is higher than it was during the general. By the end of the early voting period during the general election, the proportion of the electorate that was under the age of 40 was just over 18%, so we have a little work to do in getting young people to vote. But the situation is getting bettter and we have today and election day on which to pin our hopes.
Regarding the “Big Four” counties of Gwinnett, Cobb, Dekalb, and Fulton, the votes cast there accounted for just over 33% of total votes cast throughout the state yesterday. And that’s exactly where we want them to be, because these Big Four account for 33% of Georgia’s population. Because these four counties got a head start on the vast majority of other counties in Georgia, they still account for about 36.2% of total votes cast thus far in the runoff.
With respect to today’s turnout, we are running about 23% ahead of the total from two days ago. We are on pace for 400,000 votes today!
And Atlanta turnout looks be enormous today. The average wait time in Dekalb increased from 25 minutes yesterday to 37 minutes today, for a nearly 50% increase. Yesterday, at the same point during the day, 10 of Fulton’s 24 polling stations were experiencing a wait time of more than 1 hour. Today, there are 15 polling stations in Fulton that are experiencing a wait time in excess of one hour, with many of those being in the most liberal parts of Atlanta. Wait times in Clayton County are as high as 3 hours today at the South Clayton Recreation Center, which sits in an area that could vote over 90% for Senator Warnock. Wait times in Gwinnett and Cobb counties are also looking strong in the areas in which we need them to be strong, such as Powder Springs, Mableton, and Snellville.
It looks to me like Obama’s rally for Warnock in Atlanta last night is paying huge dividends. Let it be so.
Tomorrow, I will offer the final early voting report for this cycle along with a prediction.