What's behind Georgia's record-breaking early voting turnout

Caption

Early voting is underway in Georgia and ends Nov. 1. A record number of ballots were already cast in the first of the three weeks.

Credit: GPB News

A record 1.4 million ballots have been cast in Georgia since early voting began last Tuesday. That exceeds the early vote totals in the last presidential election year. What that means for which candidates will prevail in November is still an open question, but those numbers do tell us something about the nature of this race and the strategies the presidential campaigns might take to pull off a win. Zachary Peskowitz, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello.

Peter Biello: The presidential election is going to be close, so it's not going to be possible to make an accurate prediction based on one data point, voter turnout. But what do you think is possible to glean from this record-breaking early turnout in Georgia?

Zachary Peskowitz: Yeah. So we've seen over 1.4 million votes cast as of yesterday, which is quite a bit. So, you know, there's some evidence of enthusiasm and excitement. People want to get their votes recorded as quickly as possible. I think one of the particularly important trends is we're seeing Republicans accept and embrace, to some extent, early voting more so than in past cycles. If you look at the data, a lot of the Republican counties and congressional districts in the state have had quite a bit of early voting in the first week that the polls have been open.

Peter Biello: Women have cast 55% of ballots so far. What can you make of that?

Zachary Peskowitz: Yes, I think there are some demographic trends that are positive for the Harris campaign and others that are more positive for the Trump campaign. So in particular, females are casting a lot of their early votes. That's a positive for the Harris campaign. But we're also seeing Georgians over the age of 65 casting a lot of early votes, which is more of a positive for the Trump campaign.

Peter Biello: Former President Trump has suggested that mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud and early voting is also susceptible to fraud. To what extent do you think that messaging is pushing some of his supporters to wait for Election Day to cast their ballots?

Zachary Peskowitz: Yeah. So in the 2020 cycle in particular, there was a lot of messaging from the Republican side about voting by mail in particular. That messaging has really changed this cycle. I think that Republicans have said "Just get out and vote as quickly as possible." That's happening in Georgia. That's happening in other prominent races across the country, like Kari Lake in Arizona, the Republican, for example. And there's much more of a concerted effort for Republican elites to message to their supporters: it's okay how you vote. Just do it as quickly as possible.

Peter Biello: What might such high turnout do to the get-out-the-vote strategies? In other words, have both camps kind of know that more people are already locked in earlier? What does that do to their approach going forward?

Zachary Peskowitz: Yeah. So both campaigns are modern and very sophisticated. They have individual-level voter lists. They have phone numbers and can send out text messages and have, you know, a variety of means to contact individual voters. So if you know exactly who has turned out to vote, you can allocate your resources towards those people who haven't. And that can be very powerful in the last few days before the election.

Peter Biello: What can we glean from numbers coming out in different parts of the state? Obviously, the larger the population in a given place, the more ballots that are cast. But in rural areas where there aren't as many voters, they, in some cases, are seeing a higher turnout percentage.

Zachary Peskowitz: Yes. So I think it's interesting to look at the share of votes cast as a percentage of registered voters so far. And we've seen in many of the rural, more Republican parts of the states that those numbers been pretty high so far. In 2020, Biden got about 85% of his vote from early voters, both mail and in-person, whereas Trump got about 75%. It'll be very interesting to see if those numbers equalize or if Trump is even able to surpass the Democrats in this cycle.

Peter Biello: What do we know about who tends to vote on weekends?

Zachary Peskowitz: Yeah, we have another weekend ahead. And so it'll be very interesting to see whether more younger people take advantage of that [during] that weekend coming up. There's, you know, a long tradition of Black Americans in particular, you know, often in combination with "Souls to the Polls” as we saw over the weekend.

Peter Biello: Church-led efforts to get people to the polls.

Zachary Peskowitz: Exactly. Church-led efforts to go to the polls. That can be very, very powerful. People who are working and may not have as much flexibility during the work week tend to vote on the weekends.

Peter Biello: So what data points will you be watching in the next two weeks?

Zachary Peskowitz: I think it'll be interesting to see how the demographics change. So early on, we've seen a very high share of the early voters are over the age of 65. So is that going to persist? How does the data change once we've had a second weekend? And I think that will be very important to look at to get — to get a sense of where we're going to be on Election Day.