The Thursday Problem – why we can’t slow down
There has been a bunch of good news in the campaign to block unqualified candidates like Herschel Walker. Our effort has been acknowledged and appreciated as well, so here is the report.
Good News
As of Dec 1, these are the betting pools on the Georgia Senate Runoff election as forecasted by PredictIt with over 1 million bets placed for this race so far. Warnock is leading (85%/15%)
Please note that before the midterm election, Walker’s chance of winning was 65%/35%, then it dramatically flipped after the election. My read is there were several factors in this dramatic reversal
- Walker numerically lost the midterm election to Warnock
- Republican Governor Kemp was not on the ticket to bring out voters
- Walker received 210,000 fewer votes than Kemp in the November election
- Since the senate is not in play, those who were voting for Walker for GOP control (but were not excited about the candidate) now had to say they wanted just him
This is good news, but it doesn’t mean we can assume the election is already won. We’ll keep flyering and canvassing and more, because none of us want to see 2016 happen again- win or lose, we’ll know we did everything we could to help re-elect Reverend Warnock. And just like this prediction poll was wrong about Walker winning the midterm, or that there was an 85% chance Hillary Clinton would win, it could be wrong. 15% chance is about the chance of a day being Thursday. Thursdays happen all the time.
Black turnout outpacing Midterms
6 days into early voting, over 16% of the registered population has turned out to vote and 29% of the people who voted in the recent midterms, these numbers are encouragingly high. But what is especially important when comparing the racial identification of the voters, Whites are way down and Blacks are up 10% in turnout so far in the runoff. This alone (if the trend continues) would doom Walker. Blacks voted 89% for Warnock in the recent midterms, Whites voted 67% for Walker.
There is a reason for some of this racial disparity. The big primarily Democratic Atlanta metro counties (where half the state’s population resides) had early voting on Saturday. Many smaller, poorer, redder counties chose not to because of the expense (or because they assumed the Republicans would win the court case block voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving). So Democrat heavy areas got a head start, but as the days of early voting have progressed, this 10% higher Black voter turnout than ???White??? during the midterms seems to persist.
For those of us in the field this is quite inspiring information which is never available in most states because they dont track it and rarely available this quickly. I wish there were more we could thank the Georgia Secretary of State for.
It also does not help that Walker is running a terrible campaign, independent of the many scandals and seriously foolish statements (“I have always lived in Georgia” and “I want to be a werewolf”). Walker decided to take 5 days of the runoff period off, for Thanksgiving. That is a big piece of a 27 day campaign. And let’s not forget that Walker “described himself as living in Texas during (a) 2022 campaign speech,” and in fact still registers his $3 million Texas home as his primary residence- for the tax break.
The Warnock campaign alternatively is energized, outspending Walker in ads, working with churches, college groups, unions, LatinX and other immigrant communities. Obama comes today and speaks, Michelle has recorded some robo calls.
The Walker campaign has asked Trump not to come to Georgia.
Nice Words
We have been working with all 4 of the free ride services for the campaign. Each has it’s own advantages, territories and strengths. Especially, those with limited “ground game” are excited about working with us to compliment their virtual promotion approach. The largest free ride service in Georgia for the runoff is Plus1 Vote. They described us nicely in their pitch deck
Page 19 of the Plus1.vote Pitch Deck
And while this is uplifting good news, it is important for us to keep going full speed, to avoid the Thursday problem. Walker is down but definitely not out and we can not risk a long shot win in 2022 which mimics Trump’s surprise win in 2016.
So if things look good, why are we working so hard?
It is critically important to remember these election laws have been designed for Republicans to win, and that 2020’s runoffs were a statistical outlier- Republicans generally win runoffs in Georgia. 2020/21 was an exception because of the tremendous effort that went into that campaign. The Georgia runoff system was created by (mainly) white politicians to dis-empower the “Negro bloc voting” (direct quote). How do we know this? Because Denmark Groover, who proposed the runoff system admitted decades later that “I was a segregationist. I was a county unit man. But if you want to establish if I was racially prejudiced, I was. If you want to establish that some of my political activity was racially motivated, it was.” The runoff time has been cut in half.
Greg Palast (perhaps the best reporter on election fraud in the US) also warns that the 2020 voter suppression law was designed to basically eliminate mail-in ballots which were 2:1 in Warnocks favor. Those long lines and wait times you are reading about, that is significantly Warnock voters who are discouraged from voting.
If you can help our efforts please do support us in these last critical days.
Join the Air Team for Georgia
It is cliché to say “the internet has changed everything”, yet it is foolish to not examine how these changes should translate into changes in our behavior. For the Georgia Senate Runoff campaign, thinking about how folks far from us might use the internet to help is a daily occurrence. Here are our current ideas:
- Basic social media support. The easiest and cheapest way you can support us is to post things on social media. We would love for you to post our fundraiser but if you have any connection to Georgia at all, what would be really great would be for you to post the link to info about Free Rides to the Polls, printable flyers, resources for voters, and other voter support information.
- Help us find volunteers. We are working with a growing group of in state volunteers to distribute information about free rides to the polls. These volunteers fall generally into two groups. Partisans who want to be publicizing ways to get Warnock to win and non-partisans (often affiliated with churches) who want to just provide public information encouraging folks to get to the polls and how to get there for free. We provide both pro-Warnock and non-partisan resources when publicizing free rides
- Share our materials with people in Georgia. We can organize volunteers to put up flyers, hand out info for free rides, and remind people to vote- but you’re welcome to do so independently as well. We provide print-ready files for posters, flyers, and business cards on our website here. Currently those materials are available in English and Spanish, and we’ll be adding other languages as they become available. Speaking of translations…
- Translations– In 2020 we translated runoff voting materials into more than a dozen languages. While we likely won’t surpass that number this year, we’d certainly like to try! And if you have good contacts with language groups in Georgia, we would love your help with distributing translations via social media. If you’re interested in translating then something either comment on this blog post or get in touch with me at paxus@twinoaks.org
- Become a dispatcher. Some of the rideshare groups we are working with don’t use Uber or Lyft, but instead dispatch volunteer drivers to get people to the polls. This means calling and checking people are ready for their rides and making sure drivers can keep their connections or get usefully re-assigned.
- Hustle money for us. I know it is uber boring, but we still find that every dollar which comes in helps us do more things to get people the polls*. And our team is still expanding (with Zi arriving yesterday). Here is the GoFundMe link which you should send to that rich relative of yours who always talks about how people should do something to stop the Trump madness, well now would be a great time them to do something. Please post GFM link on your own social media, you would might be surprised how generous and engaged your friends are.
* And for our donors who are reading this as part of an update, we are especially grateful for your support. We launch these efforts unsure we can pull the money together to cover all our costs and we have been very happy with the response. Thanks for taking a chance with us, it looks like it is going to pay off. Record early voting, record young people turn out, tremendous enthusiasm for the campaign.
your passport to complaining 