Self-Important White Boy Predicts A Harris Win In Georgia

Tonight I want to see bigger, bluer islands in the red sea

Every year when March Madness comes around, Americans are inundated with a deluge of uninspired and unoriginal articles highlighting the nation’s productivity loss from our nation’s office drones spending much of their Thursday and Friday closely monitoring the progress of their brackets. As I spent countless hours looking for that one poll, that one article, or that one tidbit of early voting data that would give me the solace of knowing Harris would win, I wondered why no enterprising reporter had repurposed the productivity loss narrative for this presidential election.

I never found what I was looking for, but as election day approached, I found myself increasingly confident that Harris was going to win. What was the basis for this confidence? I don’t fully know. A little bit of anecdata. Like hearing that family members and friends were pulling the lever for a Democrat for the first time in their lives. But it also came in a faith that some, not all, and undoubtedly not as many as should, of the people I grew up knowing would do the right thing.

While there exist a variety of factors that will play a role – Black turnout, Latino voting preferences, the ratio of female to male voters – I believe that the biggest of them all will be the preference of white suburban voters.

My personal history makes me somewhat well-placed to have a gut level insight into those voters. I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where white, college-educated voters were crucial to flipping Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022, and where they will be essential to Harris winning Michigan..

I spent my teen years in Gwinnett County, Georgia, a growing, increasingly diverse, and increasingly blue county in Metro Atlanta. For years I urged Democratic leadership in Georgia to put real money into Gwinnett. I was vindicated when, in 2016, I chaired a campaign that flipped a Republican-held Georgia State House Seat in the county. It was a sliver bright on a dark, dark evening.

I was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, a large state university with a problematically white student body. I was in a (mostly white) fraternity, and out of 100ish dudes I counted myself among the 5-10 who were avowed Democrats. And while I am 100% certain a solid majority voted for Trump in 2020, I was genuinely shocked with how many of them were openly supporting Biden. An interesting narrative might have been seen had the media brought the same energy seeking out white men and women from SEC schools who were voting for Harris as they had searching for Black men voting for Trump.

Putting my faith in white moderates to do the right thing is pretty fucking stupid. Dr. Martin Luther King was “gravely disappointed with the white moderate” in 1963, and here in his city I am fully prepared to be disappointed with them in 2024. But these are the people I think I know. I can only hope that many of them are going to do the right thing today. And yes, I did just use a decontextualized MLK quote immediate after using the phrase “pretty fucking stupid.”

But enough with my self-aggrandizing personal essay. Here are four things I am going to be paying attention to in Georgia. And one thing I am not.

Fayette County

This is a tired take. I turned on CNN this morning and, no shit, they were talking about Fayette County. Every national “analyst” who has ever spent 45 minutes on a layover at Hartsfield-Jackson is talking about it. This suburban county has been trending towards Democrats for a good while. This is the election where it goes blue. Its Black population share has been increasing for decades and the white majority is chock full of the white college graduates who have been leaving the GOP in droves. Harris wins 55/45.

Forsyth County

Another boring ass take. If people aren’t talking about Fayette County, then they are talking about Forsyth County. It’s fast-growing. It’s increasingly diverse. It has been trending bluer. You can find 5000 Tweets telling you this. But all this conventional wisdom about it being a bellwether county ain’t wrong. The wild card for me is the AAPI vote in the southern part of the county. It is significant. So significant that there are cricket pitches in public parks with signs telling you not to play baseball. The AAPI vote isn’t monolithic. Turnout can be inconsistent. If Harris approaches 40 percent in Forsyth County it will be a huge win for her. And I think she will.

Oconee County

This is into a county I haven’t seen nearly as much chatter about. It is a wealthy, college-educated, largely white county. It is a suburb of Athens, home to the University of Georgia. And I must reiterate it is very, very white. Its overwhelming caucasity provides an opportunity to detect a significant shift in how white college-educated voters throughout the state have moved since 2020. That said, there are subtle differences between a voter in Oconee and a seemingly similar voter in Metro Atlanta. Voters that look similar on paper are going to be slightly more conservative in Oconee. Biden got 32% there in 2020. If we see Harris pulling 36-37% here it is a five alarm fire for the Trump Campaign.

Bibb/Dougherty/Richmond/Muscogee/Chatham County

These are the counties of the large(ish) cities that aren’t Atlanta. They will be solidly Democratic. Analysis here hinges completely on election day turnout. They all came in below the statewide average for early voting. Dougherty County was especially shit. I have concerns that Democratic voters in some of these counties, especially Richmond and Dougherty, may feel disaffected. Many of them haven’t seen much, if any, positive change in their communities for decades, regardless of who is President. I don’t have a good read here. Prayers up that the Democratic has a turnout apparatus ready to roll in these counties today.

Small Counties

MAGA has been freebasing rural surge hopium for days now. I remain unbothered. As you may hear repeated as nauseum tonight, Georgia has 159 counties. In 2020, in Georgia, you had to add up the vote total of the smallest 89 counties to reach the total number of votes for Fulton County, the state’s largest. Many smaller county populations have stayed flat or even depopulated since 2020. Metro Atlanta has continued to boom. Additionally, much of what you are seeing in these rural counties is a voting modal shift. In 2020 Trump idiotically told people not to vote early. If that dumbfuck has learned one thing in his life, it is that it is wise to get your people voting early. The rural surge is much ado about nothing.

Prediction

Harris wins Georgia and clears 51% while doing so.