• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. voter registration>

Rush to register young Georgians as key voting bloc, again, in Senate runoffs

Sara Swann
December 07, 2020
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff

Democrats Raphael Warnock (left) and Jon Ossoff will face Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Georgia next month.

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

Just as young voters played a significant role in turning Georgia blue for president this fall, they may also be paramount in determining which party controls the Senate.

And with so much riding on the runoff elections in four weeks for both the state's Senate seats, civic engagement organizations and political groups have been firing on all cylinders to find and register new voters by Monday's deadline. They are particularly interested in the 23,000 Georgians who weren't old enough to vote this fall but will pass their 18th birthdays by Jan. 5.

That may seem like a relatively tiny number in a state with 5 million votes in the general election. But the number is twice as big as Joe Biden's margin of victory all three times Georgia's presidential ballots have been counted. And, in a contest with turnout sure to be way down from November, the import of each ballot will be greater.


And the stakes have also become even bigger than they appeared a month ago. Victories by both challengers, documentary filmmaker Jon Osoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, would allow the Democrats to control the Senate next year with 50 votes and the tie-breaking power of Vice President Kamala Harris. But Congress will remain under divided control, hobbling the chances of Biden's agenda, with the return of even one of the Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In November, Georgia had the highest participation by young people anywhere in the country, with one-fifth of all votes cast by people younger than 30, according to researchers who study the youth vote at Tufts University. Such people cast 16 percent of the vote nationally.

And the exit polls then suggest the youth vote was crucial to the Democrats' fortunes. Biden, the first of his party to carry the state since 1992, secured his razor-thin margin with 56 percent of the under-30 vote, his strongest showing among four age groupings. Ossoff bested Perdue among such voters by 11 percentage points and Warnock won the youth vote over Loeffler by 16 points. (Because there were other candidates, none of the four candidates cracked 50 percent of the vote, the requirement for all statewide contests in Georgia.)

Turnout in the Peach State increased more than 20 percent, with nearly a million more votes cast than in 2016. But participation in the second round seems guaranteed to be less, even though the twin contests may generate more political spending than any similar races in American history. Turnout declined at least 43 percent from November in each of Georgia's previous four runoffs.

The election's scheduling right after the holiday season, and during the worst projected phase for the coronavirus pandemic, will make it especially difficult to persuade Georgians to mail in another ballot or head to the polls again.

To inform voters of the timetable, national and regional partisan and ostensibly nonpartisan groups have returned to social media and revived their phone banks — a continuation of the robust digital campaigns they ran after Covid-19 made in-person efforts essentially impossible since last March.

To bolster Republican support in the runoffs, the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition has been conducting registration efforts through the state's 5,000 evangelical Christian churches. The national and state chapters of the College Republicans have been focused on reaching young voters on the state's 75 campuses.

Their efforts may be hurt, though, by the intense GOP strife created by President Trump and his repeated efforts to delegitimize the state's results and his intensifying criticism of the state's Republican election officials



Democrat Stacey Abrams, one of the country's most prominent voting rights advocates, has been credited with registering 800,000 Georgians in the two years since narrowly losing the governor's race. Her organizations, Fair Fight Action and the New Georgia Project, are now at the heart of outreach and fundraising efforts for the Ossoff and Warnock campaigns.

The Southern Poverty Law Center announced last week it had donated $1.9 million to registering, educating and getting out the vote of Black, Latino and younger Georgians in the runoffs — bringing to $4.4 million its 2020 campaign investment in the state. The beneficiaries include Black Voters Matter, Fair Count, the Georgia branch of NALEO, Georgia Shift, ProGeorgia, Vote.org and the New Georgia Project.

"The American people turned out in record numbers before and on Nov. 3 to decide a new direction for the country," said SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang. "But in Georgia, the work of voters is still needed."

While the money can go a long way to mobilizing the vote, though, it's a drop in the bucket compared with more than $315 million already committed to television advertising across the state.

More than 1 million have already requested mail-in ballots for the runoffs. The deadline to do so is Jan. 1, while in-person early voting begins in two weeks.

From Your Site Articles
  • The three steps to ensure a well-run runoff in Georgia ›
  • 200,000 Georgia voters wrongly purged, says lawsuit - The Fulcrum ›
  • Georgia runoff elections will be the next test for democracy - The ... ›
  • Major Georgia county closes half of early balloting centers - The Fulcrum ›
  • Voting eased in runoffs, but Georgia GOP wants rollbacks - The Fulcrum ›
  • Georgia showcases problems with winner-take-all elections - The Fulcrum ›
  • Few problems as Georgians cast final votes of 2020 election - The Fulcrum ›
  • What if the Senate won't seat Georgia's winners? - The Fulcrum ›
  • New Georgia Project agenda starts with voter empowerment - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Georgia's Runoffs Will Determine Control Of The Senate. Here's ... ›
  • Activists Begin Registering Young Voters In Preparation For ... ›
  • 'They know their vote matters': the Georgia Senate runoffs battle is ... ›
voter registration

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Texas leads the way

Lawrence Goldstone

Why the Founders would be aghast at the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling

Beau Breslin

Risks and rewards in a polarized nation: Businesses face tough choices after Roe v. Wade ruling

Richard Davies

The economic blame game, part 1: Blame your opponents

David L. Nevins

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno
latest News

Coalition aims to recruit 100K veterans and military families to staff 2022 elections

David Meyers
4h

Video: David Levine & Georgia Election Official Joseph Kirk Discuss 2022 Primary

Our Staff
4h

Wait, what? Democrats are also funding election deniers?

Damon Effingham
7h

Podcast: The crucial role of political centrists

Our Staff
9h

Busy day ahead with primaries or runoffs in seven states

Richard Perrins
Reya Kumar
Kristin Shiuey
27 June

The state of voting: June 27, 2022

Our Staff
27 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Retired Army Gen. George Casey

Coalition aims to recruit 100K veterans and military families to staff 2022 elections

Leadership
Video: David Levine & Georgia Election Official Joseph Kirk Discuss 2022 Primary

Video: David Levine & Georgia Election Official Joseph Kirk Discuss 2022 Primary

Elections
Doug Mastriano

Wait, what? Democrats are also funding election deniers?

Podcast: The crucial role of political centrists

Podcast: The crucial role of political centrists

Leadership
U.S. and Texas flags fly over the Texas Capitol

Texas leads the way

State
Founding Father John Dickinson

Why the Founders would be aghast at the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling

Judicial