From the Biden thread, I'll post it here because it fits better in this thread:
Quote (IceMage @ 7 Jan 2021 01:20)
Yeah, I've heard the suburbs were better for Perdue, and the Trump base dropped off. Obviously because the president was pushing the voter fraud nonsense, and because a portion of his base is only motivated by him on the ticket.
The question really is: which of the two was the more important factor?
Some simple facts: Republicans beat their polls across the board and had a successful night in all types of races in 2016 with Trump on the ballot. They also beat their polls across the board and had successful nights in the House, the Senate and state legislative races in 2020 with Trump on the ballot. Trump himself also beat his polls substantially and got closer to pulling it off again than anyone expected or he had any right to.
In 2018, without Trump on the ballot, his opponents were just as motivated, but a crucial segment of low propensity Trump voters doesnt turn out, which turns the trumpy hyperpolarization of the electorate into a losing proposition for Republicans. Same story in the GA runoffs: unbelievable turnout for the Democrats, very good turnout for the Republicans, but it's a liiittle soft in a few crucial places, and since the races were super close, this made the difference.
By the way: it was the exact same story with Obama and Democrats: great years in 2008 and 2012 with Obama on the ballot, horrible years in 2010 and 2014 without him. Obama reliably drove turnout for the other party just like Trump, but only turned out the low propensity voters from his coalition (disengaged blacks for Obama, rural whites for Trump) when he himself was on the ballot.
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Regarding the bigger picture on Georgia: the huge population growth and rapid diversification of the Atlanta area was always a ticking time-bomb for Republicans. Indeed, from 2010 through 2020, Republican margins in statewide GA races decreased from cycle to cycle almost linearly. Trump accelerated this pre-existing trend a little bit, but GA would have been a lost cause for Republicans by 2024 or so even without him.
So yes, for a fleeting moment in time, for one cycle (2020), Republicans and Democrats were equally strong in Georgia and any tiny edge or mistake was able to swing a race. Trump's rhetoric probably depressed rural Republican turnout and pushed up black turnout by just a hair, and given Georgia's super-tight 2020 baselines, this presumably was enough to swing the Perdue race. (Loeffler was a weaker candidate and probably toast either way.) But like I said: Republicans were on borrowed time in Georgia anyway, the state will go the way of Virginia or Colorado over the coming years.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 6 2021 09:15pm
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