Georgia voters top 1M in early voting turnout, breaking the record for a primary election

[RandySF]

Georgia voters broke a turnout record for early voting in a primary election on the final day of early voting, and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is concerned about the Democratic turnout advantage.

About 1 million people turned out for early voting as polls closed Friday, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The previous record for early voting in a Georgia primary was about 857,000 in 2022.

And Democrats have flipped the script on Republicans this year compared to the early voting period in the 2022 primary...

This year, Democrats have a 15 percentage point turnout advantage over Republicans, with about 580,000 voters pulling Democratic ballots and 430,000 pulling Republican ones. Some 16,000 voters chose a nonpartisan ballot.



https://www.wabe.org/georgia-voters-break-the-record-for-early-voting-turnout-in-a-primary-election/

[summer_in_TX]

1. May Matters!

The Texas primary in March saw a similar big surge of Dems voting. Actually both parties turned out in higher numbers than before, but Dems' enthusiasm was very noticeable.

A new nonprofit, March Matters (now going by May Matters), used data info to educate Texas primary voters on the fact that most races are decided in the primaries. In 2022, only 4 seats in the Texas House was decided in a competitive race in November.

They're now active in Georgia – plus in the Texas primary runoff happening now. They're nonpartisan and don't endorse candidates or parties. Pretty brilliant strategy in partnering with companies, civic organizations, churches and other religious organizations. I learned about them from my church's e-blast. Quite unusual for our denomination to do anything of the sort.

They provide templates and messaging that can be used and adapted. My LWV is working hard to turn out more voters than usual in the primary runoff using their content. They crunched the numbers and Texas primaries voters have 3 x the impact of general election voter. But for runoffs have more than a 50 percent drop-off in the number of voters turning out, every voter's vote has 27 x the impact that it does in November (using data from the 2022 midterms). Seems to be working as one thing (among others) to increase turnout.