Warnock wins the runoff (again)

A few thoughts on Warnock beating Walker.

First, the national media continuously contrasted this race with Kemp/Abrams, but they had it all wrong. Kemp had enormous advantages.

1. He was the incumbent. There has to be a convincing reason to unseat the incumbent. There wasn’t. Note that Warnock was also an incumbent and won.
2. The Governors race is not nationalized. Governors have a large indirect impact on federal elections, but the impact is indirect. This is very different than a house or Senate race. The stakes were lower.
3. He had proven himself competent. I disagreed with him on policy, but never felt that he was going to undermine democracy or start a war with a crazy tweet or not understand his own job or pass policies just to piss off the other side or any of the craziness that surrounds the Trumpites.
4. Kemp was not Trumps man. He had differed from him, done it publicly, and did it while governing (not as part of a campaign).

We voted for Abrams (of course), but we are okay with Kemp winning. He has done a decent job and will continue to do so. He follows a line of Georgia governors who campaign as right wing culture warriors who then govern from the center, mostly avoiding culture wars in favor of economic prosperity.

The runoff was a partisan election. As most are these days. My Democrat friends from out of state are fond of mocking Southern Republicans, but they are just as ideological. If the Democrats ran a bag of sand for the Senate, I’d probably vote for it and they would also. Republicans can hardly be blamed for voting for Herschel Walker. This was a race between Democrats/Biden and Republicans/Trump in proxy form. Warnock and Walker’s own particular stories and competencies barely mattered. I doubt any of my Democrat friends can identify a specific policy Warnock particularly champions or breaks from the Party on. It doesn’t matter. Warnock is senator 51 for the Democrats, that all that mattered. Republicans can’t be blamed for using the same logic.

I was not surprised Warnock won. I felt all along he had the edge, and publicly predicted it on election night. (That’s one for Muttrox!) After all Warnock won the first election. He didn’t get to 50%, but he won. So, what are the factors that would change the outcome in a runoff?

1. The stakes were lower on both sides once the Democrats had the 50^th Senate vote. Democrats wanted the 51^st seat, but it wasn’t critical. The GOP had already lost the Senate either way so Walker’s win wouldn’t be as important. Which of those motivations would be bigger? Hard to say, but I felt that the GOP would be less motived than Dems.
2. The Libertarian candidate had just over 2%. All else being equal, there is no reason to think they would go disproportionately for the Republican candidate.
3. Another factor I haven’t seen reported anywhere. Runoff day was crummy. It had rained for several days, it was wet and grim and miserable. Bad weather always depresses election turnout. At the margins there will be some voter who was barely motivated enough to vote and the bad weather is enough to keep them home. But since the Democrats had disproportionately voted early, it didn’t matter as much on their side. Bad weather hurt the GOP more.

Some things that don’t matter.

1. Advertising: I don’t know why candidates bother to spend so much money on TV ads. I don’t know a single person who has ever changed their mind because of a TV ad. Nor do I know someone who decided whether to vote or not based on being “activated” by advertising. A giant waste of everybody’s time and money. Election after election proves that it just doesn’t matter, but they keep pissing away money.
2. Candidate Quality: Walker was a terrible candidate. Of course it mattered. Just not as much as people think. See the beginning of this post – in a partisan election, it just doesn’t matter who the candidate is. (And concussions are serious! Our son just had one, and he is still recovering a couple days later. Herschel took a lot of hits over his life. It showed. He thinks almost as incoherently as Trump.)
3. Voter Suppression: The evidence is that most of the issues the left gets worked up about don’t matter. Be angry about gerrymandering, not the lack of maildrop boxes.
4. Corrupt Secretary of State: I crossed party lines to vote for Brad Raffensperger. He’s a Republican executing laws passed by a Republican congress, but as far as I can see, he has played everything above board, and has done his job with great professional competence. Oh, and his tape recording of Trump blatantly meddling with the 2020 election is just wonderful. Wouldn’t that be precious if that’s what finally took him down. Sigh – I can dream.

Our household is very happy that Warnock won, and Georgia gets a bit bluer each year. These are historic times, we’re overjoyed to be part of it.