High turnout likely in November, as the 2020 election still hasn't ended for Georgia voters

Midterm elections fall between presidential cycles, typically resulting in lower voter turnout. But this year in Georgia, plenty is at stake on the midterm ballot — and voters are fired up.

"We think it will be lower than 2020, but it'll be darn close to those levels," said Mike Hassinger, a public information officer for voting with the Georgia Secretary of State office.

For Hassinger, the answer to why there is so much interest this year is clear: the 2020 election, in some ways, still isn't over.

"It probably all stems from everyone having an opinion about the 2020 election, you know?" he said. "I think there's a tremendous amount of interest in elections overall that was sparked by all the proven and disproven and rumors and what not stemming from 2020.

"Elections used to be boring, you know?"

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Besides former President Donald Trump's false conspiracies of stolen elections, there are other ways 2022 is an extension of 2020. The 2020 U.S. Senate race went to runoffs that put Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in office, tipping the balance of the chamber to Democrats.

Warnock, who ran to fill the term of Johnny Isakson after the long-serving senator stepped down due to health reasons, only served two years in the seat. Now, Warnock is running again, this time for a full six year term in a race that might determine control of the Senate.

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Meanwhile, the gubernatorial race is a re-run of 2018, with now-incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp being challenged by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

These high profile races have brought national attention and millions of dollars. Both races are close, so every vote counts.

"There are real contests going on, there's a tremendous amount of advertising that's taking place, and under those conditions a voter will potentially feel like it's really important that he/she goes and registers their own preferences, where as in a low visibility kind of contest, a lot of voters wouldn't be aware it's taking place," said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor widely considered the foremost authority on state politics.

Who is – and is not – turning out

According to data analysis by the USA Today network in Georgia, every demographic group in the state showed an increase in voter turnout from the 2018 to the 2022 primary elections. Some groups, however, increased more than others.

Black women in suburban counties, for example, represented 13.8% of all votes cast in the 2018 primary, but dropped to 11.8% in the election held earlier this year. Meanwhile white women in the same category increased from about 22.5% of all votes cast to 24%, or by 1.4% — the largest increase in vote share of any demographic group.

"It's always a question of what Black turnout is going to be, because they're such reliably Democratic voters," said M.V. "Trey" Hood III, professor of political science at the University of Georgia. "If that's depressed at all — I'm not saying suppressed — but if it's down at all, even a point, that can be a huge deal for the Democrats."

Bullock thinks that white women's turnout may be up somewhat because of, like so many other things, the 2020 election.

"As far as suburban white women, they are a group that found actions and statements by Donald Trump to be particularly troubling," he said. "His misogyny is what caused them to increase by about 100% their share of support for the Democratic presidential nominee from 2016 to 2020."

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Another voter turnout factor in the primary among groups more likely to vote Democrats was the absence of high-profile races. Abrams ran unopposed while Warnock faced only token opposition, in contrast to the Republican primary, where several statewide races were hotly contested.

"Democrats pretty much worked things out beforehand," Bullock said. "There was more happening on the Republican side than on the Democratic side."

One rapidly growing group of voters in Georgia is Hispanic and Latino residents. When Jerry Gonzalez, founding and current CEO of Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, began working in 2003 on voter turnout, there were about 10,000 registered Hispanic voters in the state. Now, there are more than 385,000, he said.

"The other surprising thing that came from the analysis we did is we have the Latino electorate in Georgia outperforming the national Latino voter participation rate for several election cycles already," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez thinks the voter registration rate among Latino and Hispanic citizens is still lower than Georgia's overall rate — Hassinger puts it at 95% of eligible voters, although there was a dip in registrations earlier this year. Among those who are registered, however, interest is high.

"Recent polling has indicated that over 70% of the Latino electorate has been paying attention to what's been happening and is interested in participating in the upcoming elections," he said.

Over the years GALEO has seen the results of its voter turnout efforts, Gonzalez said, boosting registration, interest and turnout.

"When you go into the more rural counties what we've seen is that voter participation does drop off, and that's because folks aren't receiving information about the election," he said. "Hall County used to have voter participation rates in the low 30%, but we've been doing work there for well over a decade and now they're well in the high 40s of voter participation rate in Hall county."

New Georgia election laws still controversial

The 2022 general election will be the first major federal and statewide election in Georgia under Senate Bill 202, an election integrity law passed following allegations of fraud by Trump in the 2020 general election. Among other things, the law shortened the period to request an absentee ballot, codified and restricted the number of absentee ballot drop boxes, and required a driver's license number or other ID number on absentee ballots.

Advocates of the law say it makes it easy for Georgians to vote while making elections more secure. Opponents say the law will depress minority turnout.

Hassinger points to the turnout numbers in this year's primary, run under the new law, as evidence that it makes elections secure without suppressing the vote.

"102,056 more African Americans voted in this year's primary than in 2018's primary," Hassinger said. "That's the worst case of voter suppression ever, it's actually having the opposite effect."

Hassinger said the driver's license ID number on absentee ballots replaced birthdays, which might be shared by many voters, and ended signature matching, a highly controversial process. He also said the new provision restricting who could send absentee ballot applications, another aspect of the law, prevented confusion for voters.

"We have struck the balance, we think, between election security and voter convenience," he said. "We want to make it as easy as possible for registered, eligible voters to vote."

While any new law comes with adjustments, Hassinger also said that many potential issues running an election under the new rules were worked out in the primary.

Bullock also thought that SB 202 was unlikely to impact turnout all that much. But Gonzalez disagrees — he thinks the law is still an issue, particularly given the restrictions on absentee ballots and drop boxes after they were used heavily by minority communities.

"There was no need to do the changes that the state did, they made it explicitly more difficult, targeting minority community's access," he said.

Gonzalez said more absentee ballots were thrown out, and that he is encouraging people to vote in person during early voting instead to avoid these issues. Hessinger disputed this characterization and said voters who submit absentee ballot requests with issues are given an opportunity to "cure" the issues, and that about 1.36% of current absentee requests are under this status.

Issues or partisanship?

The big question of November will be what gets voters to go to the polls — whether it is specific issues or general partisan motivation.

Hood thinks it will mostly be partisan influence rather than specific issues, although abortion remains an open question.

"I mean if someone is really upset about the abortion issue but they're a strong Democrat and they vote all the time anyway, you're not inducing higher turnout," he said.

Bullock agrees that turnout will largely be partisan and expects vote shares to be similar for statewide candidates up and down the ballot — with the possible exception of the U.S. Senate race, where some Republicans may balk at voting for Herschel Walker. Hood thinks some Democrats and independents may cross the ballot the other way to back Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who gained national attention for resisting pressure from Trump over the 2020 election results.

But there are some issues coming up this cycle that have a new urgency to them for some voters.

"What is interesting and is different in the polling that has been done of the Latino electorate here in Georgia is that both gun control, sensible gun control and access to abortion were two issues that have never been in the top five of issues that Latinos are concerned about," Gonzalez said — but now they are. "Regardless of partisanship or ideology, I think that Latinos are concerned about those two issues."

He attributes the change to the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas earlier this year.

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Regardless of what gets voters to the polls, the degree of turnout will likely determine which party succeeds.

"Republicans usually do a better job of getting their voters back to the polls in the midterm than do Democrats, therefore if it's a really high turnout election, all things being equal it probably works to the advantage of Democrats," Bullock said.

The dip between presidential and mid term elections is smaller in Georgia than it used to be, and Bullock thinks that polls may not pick up this enthusiasm if they are looking at likely voters - for example, those who already voted in the primary this spring.

"But if you've now become motivated because of the ground game ... you and your preference may not being factored into these surveys we're seeing," he said. "These are things we aren't going to know until Nov. 9."

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: GA Election 2022: Midterm turnout will likely near presidential levels