“Typically, in runoffs, you’re just trying to turn out your voters again … because it’ll be a smaller universe of voters going back to vote without a presidential race going on,” said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, a Democrat. “And [Warnock and Ossoff] will have to build on the coalition Biden built.”
Biden carried a high share of white voters for a Democrat in Georgia, but Trump may not push white suburbanites away from the GOP as strongly during a lame-duck runoff election as he has for the past four years. State Republicans rely more than ever on rural whites now, but without Trump on the ballot, they may not be as motivated to show up.
And Biden benefited heavily from booming turnout among voters of color, especially Black voters, who have proven their power in Georgia. But Warnock and Ossoff will need to motivate turnout just as high, under very different circumstances, in order to swing the state again…
Quentin James, founder of Collective PAC, echoed that for Georgia Democrats to win, they need to drive up Black turnout and expand the electorate while seeking support from white voters. But the problem in traditional Democratic politics, James said, “is that significant resources are spent solely on peeling off white voters, and rarely invested in both strategies equally.”
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