Record-Setting Early Voting in Georgia Portends High Turnout in November

More than 100,000 Georgians cast votes on the first day of early voting this year, the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said early this week. If expectations hold, he said, 2022 will see record-breaking midterm voter turnout in the state.Most states this year are offering voters some way to cast their ballots before Election Day. Just 20 days before the election, more states will begin seeing ballots roll in — either in person or through the mail.The surge in early voting in Georgia comes despite changes to the state’s early voting system enacted last year that many Democrats feared would suppress voting in some areas.Among the changes, the number of early voting drop boxes in the state was cut by roughly two-thirds, and the window when voters could request an absentee ballot was shortened to 67 days from six months.The Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, Stacy Abrams, said Tuesday that the high turnout does not refute her claims that the new laws are a form of voter suppression.“It does not mean that voter suppression doesn’t exist,” she said. “That’s like saying that there are no more sharks in the water because more people get in.”According to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project, more than 2 million people have already cast their ballots this year across 26 states. Other states with high-profile races, such as Nevada and Wisconsin, will begin early voting over the next week.The director of operations at Echelon Insights, Stephen Kent, tells the Sun that people “should expect record voter turnout just shy of 126,000,000 for the 2022 midterms.”He says that since 2018, early voting and registration data are pointing toward higher turnout, and that he expects 2022 to follow this pattern, delivering “a new high for midterms.”September polling by Echelon shows that the percentage of voters who think the country is on the wrong track is up 10 points from this time last year, sitting at 65 percent.The same survey found that pocketbook issues like cost of living, jobs, and the economy are top issues for many voters.“When people can’t afford groceries or field trip fees for their children at school because of surging gas and food prices, you better believe they’ll be voting,” Mr. Kent tells the Sun.Immigration has also reared its head as an issue since a string of Republican governors began sending migrants to places like New York City and Martha’s Vineyard.Meanwhile, abortion — an issue that is seen as being a winner for Democrats — has stagnated in voters’ minds, even as Democrats double down on the issue.Echelon’s polling showed that abortion was the top issue for just 8 percent of voters between August and September. Stubbornly high inflation and looming gas price increases do not bode well for politicians hoping to make 2022 about abortion.According to Mr. Kent, Democrats may have chosen a losing strategy in attempting to elevate abortion to the center of their 2022 platform.“Abortion access is a motivating issue for highly educated, white, liberal voters who by-and-large are already likely to vote,” he said. “Democrats have wasted several key months trying to elevate the issue of abortion to a midterm driver.”The head of the United States Elections Project at the University of Florida, Michael McDonald, says that all the signs are pointing toward a potentially historically high turnout in the midterms.“We still have a ways to go yet, but seeing people eager to vote at the first opportunity probably portends we’re going to have a high turnout election,” Mr. McDonald tells the Sun. “Interest in elections and politics continue to run high as they have in the past few years.”While he maintains that it’s too early to try to determine which party benefits from that turnout, the benefits should be highly regional. In red states, high turnout will likely help Republicans and vice versa.He does, however, warn against trusting pollsters with big gaps between likely voter and registered voter models, because in a high-turnout election likely and registered voters should share similar sentiments.“It used to be that higher-turnout elections would benefit Democrats but that’s because the party coalitions were different,” he said. “If we’re going to have a higher-turnout election it’s going to have to come from groups that don’t vote at high rates.”That means that demographics that vote at comparatively lower rates, like young people or people without a college degree, could decide the election. The net effect of low turnout groups flocking to the polls, however, will not be clear until after the election.“It’s too soon to tell,” he said. “All I can say is that the data is consistent with a high turnout election.”

Record-Setting Early Voting in Georgia Portends High Turnout in November

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