What Georgia’s past two Senate contests tell us about the runoff

MCDONOUGH, Ga. — When Raphael G. Warnock defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in a runoff election last year, delivering Senate control to Democrats, he prevailed by winning big in Atlanta and its swelling suburbs, as well as turning out Democratic voters across the state.

But the coalition that elected Warnock last year and the electorate that turned out in November when Warnock was up for reelection was subtly different — a notable shift in a closely divided state.

Warnock ran 2.4 percentage points ahead of his 2021 margin in Fulton County, a Democratic bastion that includes most of Atlanta. But he did about the same in the state’s suburban counties. And he ran slightly worse in Georgia’s rural counties, including those that are majority Black. He finished ahead of his Republican rival, Herschel Walker, but neither of them secured 50 percent of the vote, triggering Tuesday’s runoff election.

Democrats have proved they can win in Georgia — President Biden carried the state in 2020, and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) prevailed in his 2021 runoff — but the state is hardly blue territory. Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor this year, lost her race, as did every other Democrat running for statewide office. Georgia is expected be a hard-fought presidential battleground once again in 2024, making any shifts in the state’s electorate important for both parties.

Shift in Warnock’s two-party vote share

between the Jan. ’21 runoff and

Nov. ’22 general

Higher share

Lower share

1

3

5

Percentage point difference:

Urban counties

+2.4

Atlanta

Suburban counties

About even (-0.2)

Augusta

Savannah

Columbus

Rural counties

-1.7

Atlanta

Shift in Warnock’s two-party vote share between the Jan. ’21 runoff and Nov. ’22 general

1

3

5

Higher share

Percentage point difference:

Lower share

Urban counties

Suburban counties

Rural counties

About even (-0.2)

-1.7

+2.4

Augusta

Atlanta

Atlanta

Columbus

Savannah

One weak spot for Warnock in November was rural Georgia. Walker improved upon Loeffler’s margins in rural counties by nearly 2 points — it just wasn’t enough to make up for Warnock’s advantage in Atlanta and its suburbs.

Overall, Warnock performed about the same in the suburbs as he did in 2021, but he did gain ground in some suburban counties — especially those in Atlanta’s inner suburbs.

No suburban county moved further in Warnock’s direction than Henry County in Atlanta’s southern suburbs, where Warnock ran 2.2 percentage points ahead of his margin in the 2021 runoff.

Henry County’s population has doubled since 2000, rising to about 240,000. White residents have moved away in recent years, according to census data, but Black residents have arrived even faster, transforming the county from one with a White majority to one with a Black plurality.

The county’s politics have shifted, too. Voters there backed Hillary Clinton by a narrow margin in 2016 after decades of backing Republicans, even as they voted to reelect Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson. Biden carried the county by 20 points in 2020; Warnock won by even more.

“I think it’s undeniable that Henry County has shifted blue over the past couple of years,” said Taylor Fleury, the Henry County Republican chairman.

Republicans and Democrats alike credit the shift to an influx of residents from elsewhere in the country and around the world, including Africa and the Caribbean. “There’s a lot of new Americans as well as Americans from other states who are moving into Henry County because they want to be able to have a short ride into Atlanta but they don’t want to pay for Atlanta housing prices,” said El-Mahdi Holly, a Democratic state representative who flipped a Republican-held district in 2018.

Walker’s rural

advantage surpassed

by Warnock’s elsewhere

Difference in number of votes between

Walker and Warnock

400K

Rural counties

Urban

counties

Walker: 358K

more votes

Warnock:

205K more

votes

300K

200K

Suburban

counties

Warnock:

190K more

votes

100K

0

Walker

Warnock

Walker’s rural advantage surpassed by Warnock’s elsewhere

Difference in number of votes between Walker and Warnock

Walker won 358K more votes in rural areas

Walker

Rural counties

Warnock

Urban counties

Suburban counties

0

100K

200K

300K

400K

And won 205K more

in the urban ones

Warnock led by 190K

votes in suburban areas

Warnock won last year in part by driving strong turnout among Democratic-leaning voters, including Black and Asian American voters. But some of those voters appear to have stayed home in November: Asian American turnout was down by about 23 percent in comparison with the 2021 runoff, and Hispanic and Black turnout dropped by 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively, according to a Washington Post analysis. White turnout fell by just 7 percent.

“Asian turnout definitely fell off,” said Michelle Au, a Democratic state lawmaker who is Chinese American and represents a suburban Atlanta district with many Asian American voters. “I don’t think we do ourselves any favors to not see that.”

“If Asian voters had voted in the same numbers that we did in 2020, we wouldn’t even be in a runoff,” she added — Warnock would’ve won outright in November.

So Warnock and his team have redoubled their efforts to convince Asian Americans to vote in the runoff. Warnock has run ads in Vietnamese, Mandarin and Korean, and he held a get-out-the-vote rally on Saturday night at an Atlanta theater with the AAPI Victory Fund, a Democratic super PAC that works to turn out Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Unlike last year, Warnock is facing a Black opponent this time — but Walker didn’t do well in heavily Black areas in November. Just 2 percent of Walker’s votes came from precincts in which at least 75 percent of registered voters were Black; 22 percent of Warnock’s did.

Walker’s votes mostly came

from areas with fewer

Black voters

Percentage of votes for Walker and

Warnock, by precincts’ share of Black

registered voters

22% of Warnock’s votes were in areas where

at least 75% of registered voters were Black.

For Walker, it was 2%

100%

50%-74%

75%

or

more

25%

-49%

75

50%

-74%

25%

-49%

50

Less

than

25%

Black

Most of Walker’s

votes came from

precincts in which

fewer than 25% of

registered voters

were Black

Less

than

25%

Black

0

Walker

Warnock

Walker’s votes mostly came from areas with fewer Black voters

Percentage of votes for Walker and Warnock, by precincts’ share of Black registered voters

Most of Walker’s votes came from precincts in which

fewer than 25% of registered voters were Black

Walker

Less than 25% Black

25%-49%

Warnock

Less than 25% Black

50%-74%

75% or more

25%-49%

0

25

50

75

100%

22% of Warnock’s votes were in areas where

at least 75% of registered voters were Black.

For Walker, it was 2%

Overall, voter turnout declined by more than 12 percent compared with the 2021 runoff.

“While there was a lot of money, a lot of TV, [but] in certain parts of the Atlanta suburbs there was not a particularly good field campaign,” said Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.), who represents the 7th Congressional District, in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. “Certainly in my area, there was just nowhere near the kind of intensity of effort that we saw in 2020 and even in 2018.”

Part of the problem was that there were fewer competitive races, Bourdeaux said. In 2020, she flipped a Republican district and Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) defended another battleground district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. But Republicans redrew many swing districts last year during redistricting, including those held by McBath and Bourdeaux, leaving them to run against each other in the primaries for a new safely Democratic seat.

Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), the Georgia Democratic Party’s chairwoman, said that the new voting law signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp also might have suppressed turnout by causing long lines to vote that did not exist in 2021.

“I waited in line myself for two hours to vote last Saturday in Fulton County,” she said.

But she said it wasn’t surprising that turnout was lower this year than in the 2021 runoff.

“In 2021, Georgians had just turned out and flipped our state blue for the first time since 1992,” Williams said. “And so people were still engaged from that November election. We were playing for all the marbles, flipping the Senate, and so all eyes were on Georgia.”

Warnock is trying to replicate the coalition that elected him last year, while Walker is working to recreate the coalition that reelected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in November, said Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist in Georgia. The runoff will depend on which one of them is successful.

There are still about 1.7 million Georgians who cast ballots in 2020, the 2021 runoff and in November but haven’t voted in the runoff yet. The race could turn on how many of them vote on Tuesday — and which ones.

“There’s every reason to believe that we’re going to have a robust turnout that could match the 1.4 [million who voted] on Nov. 8,” Hicks said.

Dara Gold and Lenny Bronner contributed to this report.

Sources: County-level election results from the Associated Press. The share of Black registered voters was determined using precinct-level results from the Georgia Secretary of State and voter information from L2.