ATLANTA — Today, Fair Fight Founder Stacey Abrams held a virtual press conference on the state of the race in Georgia. In addition to 16 electoral votes, Georgia is the only state in the country with two U.S. Senate races on the ballot, and it has 2 hotly contested Congressional races and a state house majority in play.
Links to the three slides shown during the virtual press conference can be seen here, here, and here.
The full video from the press conference can be seen here.
Specific stats discussed on the video include:
2012 (Obama): -8 points
2016 (Clinton): -5 points
2018 (Abrams): -1.4 points despite voter suppression from Brian Kemp
Since the election in 2018, more than 800,000 new voters have been added to Georgia’s electorate. 49% voters of color. 45% under 30 years old. These are voters who disproportionately support Democrats.
In the June primary, a quarter of a million more Democrats than Republicans voted.
*Almost 1.3 million Democrats voted in the primary — compared to 1.9 million who voted for Leader Abrams in the 2018 general when she set a turnout record.
*Democratic primary turnout was 68 percent higher than 2016 and 21 percent higher than the previous record, set in the historic 2008 primary.
To date, more than 1.2 million Georgians have already requested mail ballots. These requests heavily favor Democrats. The AJC reported that, of those 1.2 million voters who voted in the primary, 61 percent pulled Democratic ballots.
One-third of the requests are coming from Black voters. In 2016, Black voters made up only 26 percent of ballot requests. This should put to rest forever the notion that Black voters don’t vote by mail. More than 400,000 Black Georgians have already requested ballots. The voter education and grassroots campaigns currently underway have proven effective in urging voters of color to vote by mail.
We mentioned before that 800,000 new voters have been added to the electorate since 2018. Here’s why this matters:
*1 in 4 Black voters who have requested mail ballots DID NOT VOTE AT ALL in 2016.
*46 percent of Hispanic voters requesting ballots DID NOT VOTE AT ALL in 2016.
*50 percent of AAPI voters requesting ballots DID NOT VOTE AT ALL in 2016.
*65 percent of voters under the age of 30 who are requesting ballots DID NOT VOTE AT ALL in 2016.
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