Hell in the Peach State

In the past month, we have not seen a feminine hygiene product ad in Georgia. We haven’t seen car commercials. We haven’t seen fast food commercials. The only commercials are campaign ads and super PAC ads. Instead of the warm holiday ads from Lexus and Apple that the rest of the nation saw, we saw attacks on Loeffler, Perdue, Warnock, and Ossoff.

Finally, today, Hell recedes.

It’s been great for local markets. I know one local mid-market station that made $4 million in December. But it has been otherwise terrible.

Here’s what I think happens. I think the GOP keeps the Senate.

Stacey Abrams has been saying 100,000 new voters have participated in the election. Republicans say that’s a bit of sleight of hand with the numbers and the actual early vote has a Democrat surge, but overwhelmingly from black voters who normally vote on Election Day. Democrats and the press dispute this. It sounds very much like the general election situation where Democrats and the press disputed every Republican claim as spin only to see the GOP proved right on Election Day.

National reporters have missed the Ossoff dynamic in South Georgia and north metro Atlanta. They all have this idea that Georgia voters will vote straight ticket. But historically, no Georgia election has ever gone straight ticket. For years, Georgia voters voted Democrat at the state level and Republican at the federal level. Now, in a lot of Georgia, they vote Democrat at the local level and Republican at the state and federal level.

In North Metro Atlanta, in the suburbs, white voters voted Joe Biden and David Perdue. In South Georgia, black voters voted Joe Biden and either skipped the Ossoff race or voted Perdue. Ossoff got 100,000 votes less than Biden. He will probably lose today. He hasn’t attacked Perdue in two weeks. He has focused on Loeffler. In an indisputably close election, he wouldn’t stop attacking Perdue unless he knew he was toast because given his 100,000 vote deficit from Biden, it is highly unlikely he would think he has it in the bag.

With Warnock, it is telling that Ossoff has had to be the attack dog. Warnock has had to go 100% positive with his messaging because Loeffler’s attacks have raised his negatives tremendously. It has hurt Loeffler too. Attack ads always hurt the person making them. But the GOP and the Democrats are both convinced the attacks hurt Warnock more.

The Loeffler v. Warnock race will be closer than the Perdue v. Ossoff race, but I think the GOP wins.

No one has paid attention to the third race — Bubba McDonald vs. some Democrat no one knows. McDonald has his own political capital and he has leveraged it. He gets a lot of Democrats to vote for him and those Democrats are Perdue voters too. National reporter do not know that.

Between the Savannah Port expansion and the south Georgia farms, there are local issues that’ll drive Perdue to victory. The GOP hope is that also helps Loeffler against Warnock. I think the attacks on Warnock have worked. That is what will help Loeffler.

I think the GOP wins. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think and the signs on the ground this morning point to a big GOP turnout for Election Day with perfect weather across the state.

Last point: I don’t think the President really mattered much last night other than getting out North Georgia. The President did not hurt the GOP momentum for today. He just started the crack up of the Georgia GOP and makes Stacey Abrams more likely in 2022. The Georgia GOP is going to have to figure out how to heal its internal wounds post election and there are lot of Republican politicians in Georgia, including the Speaker of the House, who will benefit by keeping the state GOP divided.