Friends,

With polls closing in just a few hours, voters in Georgia will cast the final ballots of the 2022 Midterm Elections and decide the outcome of the all-important Georgia Senate Runoff. We’ve brought you analyses of the early vote all cycle, and here we’ll do that once more, breaking down the trends we’ve seen from the early voting period in Georgia.

Before we get too deep into it, it’s important to caveat this data:

• The voting period for this runoff is shorter than that for the general election, meaning far fewer votes have been cast by mail in this election;
• Early in person voting didn’t start on the same day in every county; and this is all happening in a state where Republican officials have needlessly erect barriers to voting.

So, what are we seeing? Well, the most striking trend we’ve noticed is that 74,766 voters cast a ballot in the early period of this runoff who didn’t vote in November. Amongst these voters, Democrats have a modeled 34-point advantage.

Herschel Walker will face more of an uphill challenge today than he did on November 8th. So far, the modeled turnout from Democrats is at 77% of general election turnout just a month ago, while GOP turnout is only at 69% of the general election turnout.

Continuing with the positive trends for Democrats, Black voters make up 34.5% of all ballots cast, compared to 30.1% in the November election at this point. Additionally, women currently account for 56.1% of ballots now, compared to 55.7% last month.

The most concerning number for Democrats is the youth vote. So far, voters under 30 account for 7.9% of ballots now, compared to 8.9% of ballots in November, where they played a consequential role for Democrats in that election nationwide.

We know that there is much election day work to do on both sides, and many more ballots to be cast, so be sure to follow along @tbonier and @TargetSmart for all of the latest updates!