The number of people turning out for the Georgia primary this week certainly put paid to the Democratic claim about the election law that was passed in 2021. Democrats had falsely claimed that the law was a “Jim Crow” effort to restrict the vote. That was untrue; it even increased the opportunities to vote. But the turnout also showed that Georgians were in no way hindered from voting.

However, there is an underlying, fascinating number that is worth talking about — the incredible increase in the GOP primary voting numbers.

The new commonsense election integrity laws have made it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

The numbers from Georgia primaries don’t lie. Voter participation is up 96% for Republicans! pic.twitter.com/stqHoPkaKc

— GOP (@GOP) May 25, 2022

Georgia GOP primary turnout by year:
2006 – 419,254
2010 – 680,499
2014 – 596,218
2018 – 608,380
2022 – 1,109,506

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) May 25, 2022

Republicans up 96 percent and Democrats up 26 percent? That definitely kills the restrictive voting story, since both went up.

But it also shows a remarkable increase for the Republicans that we have to talk more about. Now, a percentage of that is crossover voting — about 7 percent Democrats, who asked for a Republican ballot and voted Republican in an open primary, as my colleague Sarah Lee noted. There’s no question that some of those were Democrats doing a vote against the Trump-endorsed candidates for governor and Secretary of State, as my colleague Joe Cunningham observed. It’s also quite possible that Georgians saw Brian Kemp as the more likely candidate to beat Stacy Abrams than David Perdue, and that was the paramount thought going on there.

But even if there was a certain percentage voting against Trump-endorsed candidates, there’s another important point to be made here–that even without that 7-percent crossover, the enthusiasm for the GOP candidates was up considerably and far more than the Democrats. There are likely a number of crossovers who aren’t doing it to be anti-Trump, but because they’ve had enough with Biden and the Democrats, inflation, and rising gas prices. You now have a whole block of parents who have been charged up over things like CRT, gender identity and all the chaos being pushed by the Democrats.

You also had terrific numbers for the Trump-endorsed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Herschel Walker with both getting around 70 percent. So what does that say about the crossover?

Walker’s numbers in a contested primary vs. Warnock’s numbers are a warning for Democrats.

It’s actually much worse than that: Walker got more than 100K votes than Warnock.
Either voter suppression in Georgia is already working or Dems are just not that interested in voting.
This bodes very poorly for November pic.twitter.com/ICxGzFAyFa

— Mona Sigal M.D. (@MonaSigal) May 25, 2022

The enthusiasm seems far higher for the Republican candidates than for the Democratic candidates, and it’s one more indication that a tsunami is likely on the way in November. This is a big data point screaming good news for Republicans if they stick with sense all the way to November.

It isn’t ultimately about Democrats trying to play politics over Trump or Jan. 6 or whatever Democrats would like to be pushing. It’s largely about the economy and that’s what’s going to sink the Democrats– both in Georgia and elsewhere.