Does the rural white voter strategy make sense for Georgia Democrats in 2018?
Since the 2016 election, there has been a lot of talk about the rural white voters who used to vote for Democrats but were won over by Republicans in recent years. According to the narrative, Republican politicians, particularly those in the same tough-talking vein as Donald Trump, found how to connect with working class white voters in a way that eludes liberals and coastal elites. That narrative may very well be true. There were 206 counties that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then for Trump in 2016. Those counties are whiter, poorer, and less educated (at least at the college level) than the country as a whole. There are five Obama-Obama-Trump counties in Georgia: Baker, Dooly, Peach, Quitman, and Twiggs.
The question now is who those voters are and whether they can make a difference in the Peach State in 2018. It looks there is at least one Georgia Democrat who might believe it. In a recent piece for the Washington Examiner, Salena Zito suggested that State Rep. Stacey Evans (D) could target rural white voters to win the 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Prodded along by former Gov. Roy Barnes (D)—a white Democrat who used a similar strategy to win statewide in 1998—Evans might appeal to low-income white voters who cast votes for Donald Trump and try to convince them that the Democratic Party can do more for them than the GOP.
Evans’ Democratic rival Stacey Abrams doesn’t buy it. She said this to the AJC after learning that Barnes was endorsing the Evans campaign.
There are two theories of this case. One is that we attempt to recreate a coalition that has not really existed since the late ‘90s. And the other is we build a coalition based on the Georgia we have today – a Georgia that is racially diverse, that is economically, uniformly interested in how we move forward….
Abrams has a point here. Democrats won nearly all of Georgia’s statewide races prior to 1992 with strong support from rural whites and urban blacks. But that did not last long into the 2000s, with the GOP eventually taking all of the statewide offices, both chambers of the General Assembly, and a majority of the congressional delegation. Since then, white Democrats have nearly become a thing of the past. One of the Democrats’ best showings was from Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, in 2008. He received 1.8 million votes, which was 47 percent of the state total (Sen. John McCain won the state with 52.2 percent). In contrast, the Democratic gubernatorial nominees in 2010 (Roy Barnes) and 2014 (Jason Carter) received 43 and 45 percent of the statewide vote, respectively. Both were white men running moderate campaigns aimed at swing voters. Both had excellent statewide name ID. Neither came close to winning. So what makes Evans different?
I don’t know the inner-workings of the Evans campaign. It could be that Zito and Abrams have it all wrong and that Evans, if she is so lucky to win the Democratic primary, plans to use a combination of anti-Trump fervor and the GOP’s impending doom in the north Atlanta suburbs to take down whatever nominee emerges from the Republican primary. But if she is pursuing the 1998 Barnes strategy, she will have to woo a coalition that hasn’t shown up for Democrats in nearly 20 years.
If you need convincing that the rural white coalition is not going to be an easy win for Evans, here are some numbers showing how Georgia’s electoral landscape has changed from Barnes in 1998 to Carter in 2014. Barnes defeated Guy Millner (R) in 1998 by a 52.5-44.1 margin. Nathan Deal (R) defeated Carter by a 52.3-44.9 margin in 2014.
- Georgia added over 750,000 voters, going from 1.8 million in 1998 to 2.55 million in 2014. During this period, rural Georgia’s share of the vote decreased from 37.1 percent to 32.5 percent. It also went strongly to the Republicans.
- In 1998, Democrats won 50.1 percent of the metro Atlanta vote and 55.7 percent of the rural Georgia vote. In 2014, they won 49.5 percent of the metro Atlanta vote and 35.4 percent of the rural Georgia vote.
- In 1998, almost 40 percent of Democratic votes came from rural Georgia. In 2014, just 26 percent did.
- Democrats won 118 counties in 1998, including 109 of the 133 in rural Georgia. In 2014, they won 34 counties, 22 of which were in rural Georgia. Only two of these 22 counties were less than 40 percent black.
- Rural counties swung from the Democrats to the Republicans by an average of 44.7 percent between 1998 and 2014.
- I haven’t even shown you Trump’s numbers yet.
Although I could be wrong, my hunch is that Democrats have not figured out how to win votes from white voters in rural Georgia, and it would be folly for them to base their 2018 strategy around it. Instead of trying to recreate the Barnes coalition from 1998, Democrats might fare better by trying to capitalize on recent inroads into Cobb and Gwinnett, both of which voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the northern Atlanta suburbs that almost sent Jon Ossoff to Congress in 2017. With this area’s general discontent about President Trump (which may be amplified in the governor’s race if Brian Kemp or Michael Williams wins the GOP nomination) and expected backlash to Republican policies like campus carry, Democrats are likely to be in much friendlier territory than in the rural areas that abandoned them long ago.
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Being from a somewhat rural part of the state, northwest Georgia was solidly Democrat through the ’80s and ’90s. Most of the counties up here flipped from solid Democrat to solid or nearly-solid Republican in the 2000s. The big holdout was Chattooga County, which finally started to elect Republicans on the local level this decade. The usual reason why people voted Democrat but voted Republican in national races was “he’s a southern Democrat…he’s conservative and not like those liberal Democrats in Washington, plus, I know his daddy/brother/sister/cousin/etc…he’s good people”. It’s going to be very difficult, at least in northwest Georgia, to convince voters to vote Democrat…especially if you have a candidate who takes plays from the Donald Trump campaign playbook like Sen. Michael Williams or Secretary Brian Kemp have so far.
Democrats in 2016 aren’t on the same page as rural voters. There is probably some combination of economic populism and social conservatism (see Steve Bullock/Jon Tester in MT) that could work, but I don’t think Stacey Evans has the answer quite yet. Hell, she could surprise us though. Still, I figure her team is pretty smart and has seen those numbers before. They are probably much more focused on the north Atlanta suburbs, which explains the HOPE-centric message.
Evans is right, and Abrams is wrong. It’s not about actually recreating the 1998 map, it’s cutting down the margins out there. I did the math a while ago (it’s in a post-election post somewhere), breaking down the vote by splitting the state into what the counties the census desecribes as constituting Metro Atlanta and the rest of the state. Clinton did better in the Atlanta Metro than any Democrat running for President since ’92. Given how hopeless Dukakis/Mondale were, and that Carter ’80 lost Atlanta’s suburban counties, she may have done better than any Democrat since Jimmy carried his favorite son status to winning every county in the state. The flip side is she did as bad as John Kerry in the rest of the state. If you want to leverage dissatisfaction in Cobb and Gwinnett, you can’t get absolutely slaughtered everywhere else. The non-Atlanta metro part of the state still provides about 40% of the state’s vote in a Presidential year. While that’s not just rural whites, and includes the mid-size cities like Savannah/Columbus/Macon/Augusta, it’s still a very different terrain than Atlanta and its suburbs.
Here’s where it’s tricky though. You can’t forget that a lot of the rural Democratic vote right now isn’t white, it’s blacks in the old black belt: Sanford Bishop country, but also the bunch in East Georgia from Hancock to Augusta that used to help elect John Barrow. And one reason that Clinton did Kerry numbers in the out state was a drop in turnout from those counties without Obama on the ballot. Hancock went from 3,301 Democratic votes in 2012 to 2,701 in 2016. A Democrat that wants to successfully win Georgia in 2018 is gonna have to essentially pull an inside straight:
1) Cut margins with rural whites through persuasion (and/or Trump discouragement) enough that you aren’t swamped in the out of state.
2) Get out black turnout in poor, hard to organize rural areas to help you cut down those margins.
3) Persuade suburban moderates of the Price-Isakson-Clinton-Ossoff persuasion in the Atlanta Metro to back you.
4) Get a big turnout from the more solidly Democratic, base areas of Fulton-Dekalb-Clayton-Rockdale.
Can, say, Trump being unpopular help with all of that? Yes. But it’s a coalition that, while emergent (Atlanta’s metro keeps getting bigger, keeps getting more diverse, and keeps getting more Dem) still requires everything to go right to win. It’s like, say, Democrats in Virginia in 2001: The signs for where the future coalition was were there, but they still needed a talented politician in Mark Warner and an unpopular incumbent GOP Governor in Jim Gilmore in order to push over the line.
Interesting take on it! I agree mostly, but it will tough for Evans to succeed on points 2 and 4. This is a data-free claim, but I think Obama was probably the most successful candidate for those points in the last 20 years. My general thought is that Democrats have been bleeding rural voters in off-presidential years (and probably presidential years as well) since 1998, and I don’t see a whole lot of evidence besides 16 Homes that they’ll be changing their tune any time soon. As to Trump’s unpopularity hurting the GOP in rural areas, I really don’t think so. No matter how bad his scandals get, he was the only candidate to speak directly to working class white voters in a very long time. I find it hard to believe Evans will both be able to capture some of his appeal there and then also run up the margin in metro Atlanta in a Obama-like fashion.
I tend to agree on 2 and 4. Obama, and his historic nature made him a special case in turning out those voters despite barely playing in Georgia in 2008 and ignoring the state entirely in 2012. A test for 2020 is if Democrats really target this state and invest in turnout operations they can replicate that. Working on campaigns in Georgia in 08, it was taken as a given that it was a unique opportunity because local Democrats did not have to do anything in messaging or turnout to appeal to or get out the black vote: It was coming anyway, for Obama. The thing though is that local black Democrats have not inspired a similar surge: Denise Majette and Mike Thurmond had zero real coattails in getting the community vote out, and Thurbert Baker couldn’t even get the black vote in his gubernatorial primary. So while I’m skeptical Evans gets that turnout, absolutely nothing has shown me Abrams does either.
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As to the rural areas, I’d say it’s not so much that voters flip as they stay home. Last year, while rural Dem turnout cratered in Georgia, the GOP surged slightly: The old line Perot-test style, burn it all down voter turned out. If they’re discouraged by two years of scandal, stagnation, and “politics as usual” and stay home (or, in the other way, if they came out for Trump but don’t care about Insert Career GOP Politician Running for Governor Here), it helps cut the margin down. That’s the name of the game here: margins. A GOP raw vote in Jeff Davis Count of 1800 instead of 2100 matters if it’s replicated in the aggregate statewide, even if they’re still winning the county by 45 points.
Message matters. Organization matters at least as much.
The counties outside of Metro Atlanta have incredibly weak Democratic Party infrastructure. Neither the state party nor the national party gives one damn about changing that. We have county parties that can’t field local candidates, that do not provide vocal opposition to local Republican absurdity, that do not even attempt to raise money, that do not build or maintain grassroots voter connections and advance no theory of governance for people to even consider.
The Carter/Nunn campaign, for all the millions spent, left no legacy to build on for whoever wins the nomination next year. Once again, Democrats start from scratch.
You can’t parachute operatives into Blue Ridge or Dublin once every four years and expect anyone to give a damn about what you think, because it’s plain to the people there that the party doesn’t care about what they think.
Agreed. The party reorganized on a county level this past winter. So far, we have had a picnic, a rummage sale, a dinner as a small fundraiser for the GA9 Dem candidate, and a march in the July 4th parade. The youngest person that participates is in her 40s, I think.
Sidebar: I deleted my FB account in disgust, as it had algorithmed me into some weird liberal echo bubble and was vampiring my time. I already have reddit for those needs. Will try and stay in contact through here.
You’re on target, George. Reality is that neither Dem volunteers nor paid staff can go into rural Georgia and, as they say outside 285, “draw flies.” Folks out there don’t want anything to do with today’s Democrats. Georgians outside metro Atlanta gave up on Democrats when the party forgot the point Nathan made above: “The usual reason why people voted Democrat but voted Republican in national races was “he’s a southern Democrat…he’s conservative and not like those liberal Democrats in Washington…” A Georgia Democrat was more like a national-level Republican, had little or nothing in common with national Dems.
As more and more people moved into Georgia from everywhere else, they brought their liberal Democrat philosophies with them and tried to cram those philosophies down the throats of conservative Georgia Democrats. Didn’t work, and the state went Republican.
Another factor: Native Georgians and Southerners in general have an innate distrust of strangers, be they from some other part of the US or another country. (maybe comes from a history of being invaded by the federal government, hundreds of thousands of great-grandparents slaughtered and homes, towns burned to the ground) Metro Atlanta has attracted a lion’s share of the “everywhere else” people, hence Dems still do okay there. Elsewhere, not so much. Sad to say, but I think ever-farther socialist Democrats are going to wander in the wilderness for a while..
The Barnes Administration (1999-2003) saw the beginnings of the collapse of the rural Democratic vote. In 2006, when Mark Taylor lost to Sonny Perdue by 20 points, the collapse could be considered complete.
The short term problem for Democrats is that if they get walloped again in the “other” Georgia (the roughly 40% of the electorate outside the 29-couny metro Atlanta area), then the only way to prevail statewide is a huge win (maybe 15 points or more) in metro Atlanta. And while metro Atlanta overall is trending Democratic, it isn’t Democratic enough to where a D candidate can write off the rest of the state. Clinton won metro Atlanta by nearly 195,000 votes last year (8-point margin)—much better than Obama’s 2008 and 2012 performances in the area. Heck, even Cobb and Gwinnett voted Democratic for president, first time in 40 years. But Trump won the rest of the state by about 405,000 votes (24-point margin), even surpassing the 59% Romney won in the other Georgia in 2012. Basically, Georgia is not at the point of, say, Virginia, where Northern Virginia (now about a third of the state’s electorate) is now so heavily Democratic, Clinton could afford to lose in rural areas in the state and still win the state fairly easily (by almost 6 points).
David C. makes some good points about the black turnout—it was not widely advertised last year, but black turnout was down about 55,000 from 2008, when Obama was first elected. So significant was the dropoff that in Sanford Bishop’s 2nd CD in southwest Georgia, whites outvoted blacks last year, even though a majority of the district’s registered voters are black. Clinton’s relatively better showing in Georgia last year (she lost the state by 5, compared to Obama’s 8-point loss in 2012) was not because of a surge in black turnout, but rather due to white defections from Trump, largely from the state’s upper-curst metro Atlanta GOP precincts like Buckhead, Sandy Springs, East Cobb and Dunwoody. Clinton even won 14 GOP-held House districts (while Trump won just 2 Democratic-held State House districts). Granted, even with a higher black turnout last year, Trump still would have won Georgia, but maybe by just 3 points—something which could have provided a boost to Democratic fortunes next year.
Rural white voters may be out for Georgia Democrats and their next resistance might be to urban white candidates.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-georgia-democrats-blacks-20170616-story.html
Yup, Salty. The two-party system looks dead in Georgia — again. After all those decades Democrats held every statewide office and the legislature, the Republicans have a lock on things now.