It looks like the Republicans' voter suppression efforts have had exactly the opposite effect. One million voters have already gone to the polls in Georgia for the November 8 election.
As The Washington Post reports: "While every demographic and region of [Georgia] has seen elevated turnout relative to 2018, there has been a surge of participation from women, Black voters and voters over age 50...The increases have been largest in the Atlanta region, while many counties in the state’s southwest and along the southeast coast are far outpacing their early vote counts from 2018."
Georgia's rush to the polls is the most dramatic so far, partly because Georgia regularly releases its early-vote numbers. Not all states do. But in the ones we know about — Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — early voting is robust, and generally coming back "D."
This is all good, as it frees up campaigns to focus on lower-propensity voters and helps create a bandwagon effect. Plus, it can mean smoother logistics and less chaos on Election Day itself.
So far, then, 2022 is shaping up to be an unusual year — despite strenuous efforts by the the media and the pundit class to bend it into a 2010 or a 2014. As one former Republican has observed, nobody knows what's going to happen.
"The rationale for bolstering the 'red wave' narrative is a combination of historical precedence — the party in power almost always loses seats in the first term of a presidency — and reliance on polling," Kurt Bardella reminds us. "But given what we’ve seen in the last six years, conventional political wisdom, which didn’t predict an insurrection, is quite likely to be upended." We cats PURR.
(IMAGE: Senators "My Boo" and "Bae" [Ossoff and Warnock, L to R] speak to Georgia GOTV volunteers, who are doing a very good job.)
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