x
Breaking News
More () »

Early voting data signals a close U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia

Some of the incoming data favors the Democratic candidates, while other data leans toward the GOP.

ATLANTA — The one-millionth early voter in Georgia cast a ballot somewhere in the state on Thursday in the US Senate runoff election.  

Early voting data suggests many of those voters are likely Republicans, overwhelmingly older voters, and a majority of them are white.  

Go to one of Georgia’s early voting sites, and you are likely to see plenty of folks with a touch of grey; voters who have historically helped Republicans win elections in Georgia. 

The data crunchers at Georgia Votes say that out of the 914,097 folks who voted through Wednesday, 54.6% of them are white. And 73.9% of early voters have been age 50 and over, with the majority of them over the age of 65.

Republicans historically win elections on the strength of the turnout of older, white voters.

The same website also says 24,023 early voters are new voters – who did not vote at all in the 2020 general election last month.  

A majority of those voters -- 52.5% -- are also over the age of 50. However, the data indicates 63.4% of them are non-white.

Political analyst and attorney Chandelle Summer said that some of them may be responding to the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of new political messaging.  

"There is certainly no lack of contact between the campaigns and potential voters," Summer said. "They’re able to contact pretty much everyone."

RELATED: How early voting numbers for the Georgia Senate runoffs compare to the general election so far

The AJC reports that 75,000 new voters have registered since the November 3 general election.  Its analysis says most of those newly registered voters are under 35 and 46% of them identified themselves as white.

Younger voters and non-white voters tend to be more favorable to Democratic candidates.

"That’s a pretty typical flow of new (monthly) registrations," Summer said. "However, how many of those people get out to vote is the big question."

It’s likely many of the new voters registered automatically when they got new Georgia driver’s licenses -- which means they registered only as an afterthought, and not necessarily because they are compelled to actually cast ballots.

Before You Leave, Check This Out