Brian Robinson Extends Remarks On Perdue Re-elect strategy; Predicts Victory

The following was submitted by Brian Robinson to clarify and extend remarks as posted yesterday by Ed. Enjoy the continued conversation on the topic.

Sen. David Perdue has proven himself a great candidate and is the odds on favorite to win re-election to his seat in 2020. That’s my response to EdAtlanta’s piece “Brian Robinson says Perdue can’t replicate 2014 or Kemp strategy for re-election.”

Ed accurately quotes my comments from the Political Breakfast podcast that I do with Democrat Tharon Johnson and WABE’s Denis O’Hayer. (Let me add, thanks for listening, EdAtlanta! Hope you like it.) But I wanted to clarify for the record that his interpretation of my comments don’t wholly reflect my opinions.

Our podcast isn’t the “Spin Zone.” We’re partisan sparring partners at times. But we also do straight-up analysis that our own tribes might not want to hear. Ed has highlighted one of those examples. I have said repeatedly on TV and radio that says Georgia Democrats are gaining tens of thousands of new voters during every two year election cycle and the 2018 cycle showed Democrats are a point or two away from parity. If those patterns hold, 2020 could be a dead heat.

The electorate here in Georgia has certainly changed since 2014. The state has grown significantly, and as has been the case for a long time now, for every three people who move to Georgia, two are people of color who vote for Democrats by wide margins. The electorate has also changed in reaction to President Trump. The positive side of that for Georgia Republicans is that Trump spiked the party’s numbers in rural areas by energizing and turning out low-propensity white voters. On the negative side, many highly educated white women – who perhaps voted for Nathan Deal and David Perdue in 2014 – have voted for Democrats in recent elections. This change led to many stinging defeats for Republican incumbents in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties last year.

In 2010, Deal won the metro Atlanta region by 55,000 votes. He won the rest of the state by 207,000. In 2014, he lost the metro region to Jason Carter by 5,000 – a 50,000 vote swing in four years – but he won the rest of the state by 206,000. The “rest of the state” numbers were remarkably stable. The metro Atlanta numbers however grew greatly in volume and swung heavily.

That trend has continued. Hillary Clinton won the metro Atlanta region by 200,000 votes. Trump won the rest of the state by 400,000, providing him with his margin of victory.

In 2018, Gov. Brian Kemp built his strategy on that margin of victory and he successfully maximized rural turnout to great effect. He won more than 85 percent in some rural counties. He had the right strategy for 2018. But the margin collapsed once again. Kemp beat Stacey Abrams by less than 55,000 votes. If the numbers continue to collapse at that rate, Republicans are in a tough spot. The pattern is clear. I wish it wasn’t the case, but it is.

I say these things not in surrender. I say them as a call to action for Georgia Republicans and independents who recognize that Republicans have done a remarkably good job at running this state. We’re No. 1 for business. Our economy is booming. Salaries are rising. Our university system has soared in prestige. We’ve invested in Hartsfield-Jackson and the Port of Savannah. We bolstered transportation funding and expanded mass transit. And Kirby Smart is on the verge of finally bringing home a long-overdue national championship at my beloved UGA (I don’t know that the GOP can claim credit for this, but I wanted to throw it in as incredibly awesome.)

If candidates matter, I believe that David Perdue can win re-election. He’s proven himself in office. And we know he’s an effective campaigner – he did it last time with no experience. As I said in the podcast, while the rural strategy is most definitely not a strategy that will work in the long term, I think Perdue can win back some suburban swing voters who voted for him in 2014 but voted for Abrams in 2018, particularly if he doesn’t have to go through a bruising primary that tugs him far to the right.

But I also believe that the day when a Republican senator wins simply because he has an R behind his name are over. Perdue and his team know that. His team is as talented as any I’ve ever known. They have a fight on their hands, but it’s a fight they can and should win. The right candidate and the right campaign can change the trajectory of the math.