We told you yesterday about comments from Stacey Abrams claiming that ‘voter suppression’ caused by the new Georgia election law has nothing to do with voter turnout.
Well the numbers are in on last night’s election and Jim Geraghty has the scoop:
Four years ago, in the previous midterm election, a total of 555,089 votes were cast in Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary — 424,305 for Abrams, and 130,784 for her rival Stacey Evans.
This year, the preliminary total turnout in Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary was 708,559 — even though Abrams was running unopposed for her party’s gubernatorial nomination.
In other words, not only did the law decried as “Jim Crow 2.0,” “Jim Crow on steroids,” and “Jim Eagle” increase overall turnout; under the new law, 27 percent more people voted in the Democratic primary — even with an uncontested race. This is the odd voter-suppression bill that results in many, many, many more people voting.
Unsurprisingly, turnout increased on the Republican side as well. In 2018, 608,380 people voted in the first round of the GOP gubernatorial contest (Brian Kemp and Casey Cagle went to a runoff, where 588,307 Georgia Republicans voted.) This year, 1,189,921 Georgians voted in the GOP primary.
That’s amazing. She ran unopposed and still netted more votes than she did four years ago.
What’s more amazing is that the Republican side almost doubled their votes from four years ago. To me, that speaks volumes about what we might see in November. Fingers crossed.