This SurveyUSA poll suggests that Perdue is in the lead, although under the margin of victory (perhaps due to the libertarian candidate drawing some of the votes). But as interesting to me is the huge lead that Republicans have in generating early votes. 54% of those who intend to vote for David Perdue already have: 53% of those who intend to vote for the Republican, Nathan Deal, in the gubernatorial race. The numbers for the Democrats in these two races are at 44% in both races.
The Democratic party is the one that works so heavily to organize communities, but the Republicans have a real advantage here. My guess is that it's because Republicans are so often older, and have learned to organize themselves. If the state goes red in this election it may well be simply because more Republicans than Democrats showed up early and locked in their votes. The younger and more liberal college kids may well forget about the election: this weekend is the Georgia/Florida game, commonly known as "the Cocktail Bowl."
2 comments:
It helps that Republicans can just throw away voter registrations of folks they don't like:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/10/28/3585449/court-allows-voter-suppression/
Well, Georgia's not Chicago, but there's a lot of corruption in the political system. On both sides to be sure, but obviously the winner gets more of the spoils and lately the Republicans have been the big winners.
In theory you can cast a provisional ballot, and if you return to the polling place within three days with proof that you should have been able to vote (i.e., that you're a citizen of the state), the vote will be counted. In a close race like this one, provisional ballots may be important.
On the other hand, I'm always surprised how many registrations these drives net. Georgia is a motor-voter state, so you'd ordinarily be registered when you go to get a driver's license. You're also always asked about being registered if you go to a public library and get a library card. And of course you can go register the old-fashioned way, too. So one way to avoid the corruption is to register well in advance of the election rush, through one of the several ways we've tried to make it easy for citizens.
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