Since 1992, Georgia has voted for a Republican for President every Presidential election. Absent 1992, Georgia would have gone red had George Bush and Ross Perot not split the vote, and that Red Streak would run all the way back to 1984. In 2017, Gallup said that Georgia was a two-point Democrat Advantage state, and in 2018 that number has narrowed to just one-point. Trump won Georgia by 211,141 votes out of over 4.1 million votes cast in 2016 or 5.1% the smallest margin of victory for a candidate since, of the 3 races considered in this analysis, 2008 (5.2% margin) and 2012 (7.8% margin). One or both of Georgia’s Senate seats has been held since 1992 (both since 2002), by Republicans. 10 out of 14 Congressional Seats in Georgia are held by Republicans. This state is not blue.
But that’s not what the Democrats and the media are trying to tell you. In recent weeks, Georgia has been pushed as a swing or battleground state, as that “polling” says that Georgia is within striking distance for the Democrats to not only claim a Senate Seat (only because two Republicans are running) but that there’s a chance that Biden will win Georgia. I’m here to tell you, that isn’t going to happen.
As with all of my election predictions here on RedState, they don’t go without the data to back it up.
First and again is, historically speaking, Georgia has voted for a Republican every year since 1984, except for 1992, where George H. W. Bush lost the state to Bill Clinton by just 0.5% of the vote, 43.47 to 42.88, and only because it was a three-way race with Ross Perot. The state has shown to vote for Republican presidents, with anywhere between 50% and 58% of the vote going to GOP candidates. 2016 was the smallest margin of victory for a candidate, but that margin was still more than 5 points in favor of Republicans. Historically speaking, the chance of a larger than 5 point swing in Georgia is small as well, with the largest since 2000 being 5.8 points, which was Barack Obama’s election in 2008 which can largely be attributed to Georgia’s north of 30% black vote. To suggest there is going to be a 5+ point swing this year is a pipe dream.
Second, is that polling numbers coming out of Georgia all state the race is closer than they would want us to believe. The RCP average has Biden +1.2 currently, but that number includes an absolutely laughable poll from Quinnipiac that says Biden is up 7. That would be a 12 point swing from 2016. Not happening. The remaining polls since October 6th have Trump up 2 in two different polls and two polls with Biden up, 2 points, and 1 point respectively. In 2016, RCP had Trump with a 4.8 point lead in their average which he again won by 5.1, which shows that the polls weren’t horrible in Georgia. That being said, if we look at the most recent poll out of Georgia from SurveyUSA, it actually shows that they oversampled Republicans by two points and oversampled Democrats by two points, but with a Margin of Error of 5.7 points, and is a statistically irrelevant sampling issue. What this poll does is confirm a bit more about the “shy voter” that will fall largely to Trump. It finds that 2% of Republicans are undecided, two weeks out from an election, compared to 1% of Democrats. The real shocker is that, according to the poll, 16% of Independent Voters are “undecided” at this point. Of other polls that have shown undecided voters, when forced to a decision, those voters go to Trump over Biden 3 to 1. Additionally, according to this poll, Perdue, the Republican incumbent Senator running for reelection has a 3 point lead over Liberal-favorite Jon Ossoff. There’s literally no reason to believe for a fraction of a second that a voter would be voting for Perdue, a vehement Trump supporter, and not Trump as President. It makes no sense. Granted, the polling result for the Senate race has a lot more undecideds than does the Presidential race, which could throw the percentages off a bit, but again, it doesn’t make sense that there would be a 5 point difference between the two.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, is the voter registration numbers coming out of Georgia. Georgia is another one of those states that don’t register by party, but we can still extract probable information out of the data that will be indicative of a trend or probable outcome of a situation. When comparing Trump won Counties to Clinton won counties, the new voter count for these counties is higher for Clinton won counties, but only a fraction of a percent higher in total share of voters. Republican-won counties overall have been doing better in the long run. If comparing 4-year cycles, from counties won by the previous nominee, to the growth until the next year, Republican-won counties have been out-registering Democrat-won counties in each cycle. From 2008-2012, McCain-won counties added 110,587 voters compared to Obama-won counties at 52,803 and more than a 2-to-1 margin. From 2012-2016, Romney won counties added 799,699 voters while Obama-won counties added 553,431 voters. Should the gap continued to close, it would have suggested that Democrat-won counties were closing the gap even further, but from 2016-2020, Trump-won counties added 190,309 voters compared to just 98,488 voters for Clinton-won counties, a more-than 92,000 vote advantage for Trump won counties. Now, while it is possible that Democrats increased voter registration activities in these counties, it is unlikely they did so to account for more than 50% of the added voters in these counties. What does this mean? Republicans are likely outpacing their Democrat counterparts in registrations in the state, therefore leading to a greater likelihood of Trump repeating his 2016 Georgia performance.
It is for these reasons that I place Georgia into the Trump column.
