After yet another disappointing showing for Republicans in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Tuesday, some conservatives — like Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Kevin McCarthy — have begun to point to a surprising culprit: a failure to take advantage of early voting.
The theory seems to be that Republicans are losing because early voting is giving Democrats a turnout edge. It follows a similar conversation after the midterm elections, when a chorus of conservatives said Republicans needed to start encouraging mail voting.
But as more data becomes available on turnout in this year’s election, it is quite clear that turnout was not the main problem facing Republicans.
In state after state, the final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate — and in some places a much higher rate — than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses.
Instead, high-profile Republicans like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Blake Masters in Arizona lost because Republican-leaning voters decided to cast ballots for Democrats, even as they voted for Republican candidates for U.S. House or other down-ballot races in their states.
Georgia is a fine example. While Walker may blame turnout for his poor showing in November and earlier this week, other Republican candidates seemed to have no problem at all. Gov. Brian Kemp won by nearly 8 points over Stacey Abrams; Republican candidates for House won the most votes on the same day.
Yet Sen. Raphael Warnock won in Georgia anyway because a large group of voters willing to back other Republicans weren’t willing to back Walker.
The final turnout figures make it clear that Republicans — including Walker — benefited from very favorable turnout last month. Unlike in recent years, Republican primary voters were likelier to vote than Democrats (by a modest margin). Meanwhile, the white turnout rate exceeded the Black turnout rate by the widest margin since 2006.
We went back and looked at the respondents to our preelection Times/Siena survey, and matched them to postelection vote turnout records. We found that the respondents who said they backed Walker were actually likelier to vote than those who said they backed Warnock.
But Walker still lost.
On Tuesday, Walker lost again. This time, he lost by 3 points — 2 points worse than in November. The final turnout data won’t be in for weeks, but for now it is reasonable to suppose that Warnock fared better because the turnout was incrementally more favorable to him than it was in November.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats enjoyed a great turnout. All of the Republicans running for statewide office — other than Walker — could have easily survived an electorate that was 2 points less favorable.
By our estimates, the 2022 electorate was several points more favorable to Republicans in Georgia than the 2020 electorate — which wasn’t great for Democrats, either.
Any Democratic gains in the runoff almost certainly weren’t because of early voting. After all, this election was held with just one week of early voting, as opposed to three weeks in the general election. The number of Election Day voters actually increased in the runoff. So did the share of votes cast on Election Day. But it was the Democrat who fared better.
Georgia is just one example of a broader national turnout gap, including in many of the places where Republicans blame early voting for their woes.
Take Maricopa County in Arizona. It’s home to Phoenix and around 70% of the state’s voters. Some Republicans say — without any clear evidence — they faltered in Arizona because some Maricopa voters were unable to cast ballots at the polls on Election Day, but the final turnout data shows that 75% of registered Republicans turned out, compared with 69% of Democrats. That was enough to yield an electorate in which registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 9 percentage points. Yet Republicans like Masters and Kari Lake lost their races for Senate and governor.