1869

Great news!

1870

  1. This is (obviously) utterly fantastic news.

  2. It does raise the question of where that 38k vote disparity came from. Is that people actually voting Warnock/Perdue (what mentality drives THAT?), or people voting Warnock and skipping the second race, or what? I hope there’s some data on that at some point, I’m really curious.

1871

The two races are within about 50 votes of each other total, so the gap can’t be explained by people skipping one race; most likely, the difference stems from a mixture of sexism > racism pushing Republicans away from a woman candidate + Perdue being a known incumbent with a history in the state, and people love their incumbents, no matter how shitty.

1872

Perdue was an elected incumbent and has been in the Senate 6 years, and a (slightly) better candidate than Loeffler.

1873

I thought this… i mean, he’s got quite a history on the state.

But this still suggests that people were voting for Perdue and Warnock.

I just find that a really hard thing to square into any coherent political ideology.

1874

Well there’s your problem.

You assume the average American dipshit has anything approaching coherent ideology. They just listen to what the noise box in the corner says, while the drool dribbles down their chin.

1875

That balance thing we keep hearing about, dislike of women, just voting for the same name year after year… I am sure someone will get a ton of money to analyze it all.

1876

¯_ (ツ)_/¯.

People are dumb and weird.

1877

Also bad.

1878

Yeah. That most of all.

1879

This might sound glib but: Loeffler’s a carpetbagger. I’d wager there’s more than a few cliché Georgia country-club types whose thought process was something along the lines of, “well, at least Warnock’s from here.” (I might know at least one.)

It’s probably some combination of that, conservatives who liked Warnock and disliked Loeffler for personal reason (the “have a beer with test,” Warnock is charismatic, Loeffler isn’t), a few religious types who didn’t like the church comments Loeffler made, a few GOBs who didn’t want to vote for a woman, and a few anti-semites. These aren’t significant blocks by any means, but taken together, are enough to account for the somewhat small difference.

1880

Another possibility:

  • There were some D voters who showed up to put in their vote for an African American (or a devoutly Christian D politician) and nothing else.
  • There were some R voters who showed up to put in their vote for a white man and nothing else.
1881

Also what percentage of voters are just “I’ve heard that name before”. ✔

1882

Yeah, Perdue is a Georgian. It’s easy to imagine the white, educated voters in Georgia who find Loeffler …bad. She’s a carpetbagger. She’s a she. And they are OK with voting for a country-club good ol’ boy that they know but not her.

1883

She wears a trucker hat, tho.

1884

Might literally just be the order of their names on the ballot. Anyone know how they were presented on the ballot?

1885

That’s probably not going to explain a 38,000 vote differential.

1886

Loeffler just went through a primary fight that only ended in November. There could be bitter supporters of the loser GDOP candidate in that primary that refuse to vote for Loeffler now.

1887

I really hope someone can convince Stacy Abrams to spend the next two years helping Dems win additional House and Senate seats in 2022.

1888

This. If she can be put into a position and given all the help she needs to scale that operation nationally, things get a lot more interesting in 22.