ATLANTA – John Osoff may not have known it, but the potential key to his Georgia Senate race victory was pulled into a tangled black van right next to him.
Mr. Osof, a 33-year-old former journalist who is seen as the brightest hope of Democrats in a year when the Georgia Senate could be decisive in a fight for control, arrived at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta early to vote. To his left, the van unloaded the gags of old black men.
“First time voters!” The driver was identified as Richard Sanabria and Tony Lamar Jones.
Mr. Lamar Jones (? ૨) looked at the media circus around Mr. Osof and asked, “Who is he?”
His question should come as no surprise. More than 100 million eligible, voting-aged Americans did not vote in 2016, more than the number who voted for the presidential candidate. In Georgia, about 60 percent of eligible voters voted in that year’s presidential election, compared to that year’s national figure.
Democrats are looking at Georgia for potential gains this November – the first step toward a larger goal of rebuilding their path to victory in the statewide race across the South – a high turnout will be the name of the game, and will mean persuading nonwriters to become voters.
In traditional swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, most political observers believe that voting is largely fixed and campaigns continue to rise and fall based on their ability to persuade a group of voters. But in the new set of battlefield states in the South, as well as in Arizona in the Southwest, preference is shifting non-voters to voters.
The thinking goes: if the party is able to reshape voters with new arrivals in the state – including young people, Latino and Asian-Americans – as well as greater participation of black residents and immigrants, the red state becomes blue.
But experts who study the non-voting population and failed Democratic campaigns in recent years warn that the task of changing voters is hard and complicated. They say there is no such thing, an inevitable demographic destiny.
NS Ufote, executive director of the New Georgia Project, a non-partisan group trying to get voters out of the state’s new residents, said doing so in a meaningful way would “not lead to a five-minute conversation with you people.” Porch. ”
“It’s an ongoing campaign that requires smart targeting, communication and research.”
He added, “And when you think about the practical nature of the election campaign, people who are already voters prefer to vote for them.”
Continue with Election 2020
The task of registering new voters is associated with progressive politics and is often a strategy for Democratic candidates, but groups point to targeting individuals regardless of their party’s identity.
According to a detailed study by the Pew Research Center, in 2016, non-voters are more likely to be less educated, less wealthy and more proud than the average American voter. They were also likely to lean toward the Democrats, Pew found, pointing to the swing voters who supported President Trump as an indication of how the failure to encourage liberal voters was part of Hillary Clinton’s loss.
Four years later, Joseph R. With Biden Jr. now leading the charge, Democrats say they are taking a two-pronged approach: to win some of the voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016, and to encourage nonvoters who did not participate last time. (That said, political observers on both sides of the aisle agree with what Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump’s campaign has to say, even if they are focused on persuading voters to move forward as much as the elderly and suburban voters.)
Lauren Groh-Vorgo, chief executive of the group’s Fair Fight Action, launched by Stacey Abrams in 2018, said she expects the culmination of a decade of political planning in Georgia in November.
According to figures provided by Fairfight, Georgia’s 800,000 voters who did not qualify to vote in the previous presidential election are now eligible to participate. Among these new voters, the target of group registration efforts, 49 percent are people of color and 45 percent are people under 30 years of age.
“JB Biden needs several ways to get to the White House,” Ms. Gruh-V Wargo said. “Winning in Georgia helps him get the Democratic Senate, helps him build a really strong command.”
For Mr. Lamar Jones, who saw Mr. Osoff during an early poll in Georgia, his voting path began with the help of a nonprofit group. He said Trinity House’s case manager, a group that previously worked with homeless men, helped secure the appropriate documents and provided transportation to the Atlanta Hawks’ home, State Farm Arena, which has been turned into a polling station.
In an interview after he voted, Mr. Lamar Jones said he has another reason to get involved this year: Mr. Trump.
“I thought my vote would be counted this time,” said Mr. Marmar Jones, “and I don’t want to win it again.”
According to data from the 100 Million Project, an effort by the Knight Foundation that has studied more than 12,000 people across the country who do not normally vote, their experience is not unique. Non-voters are not affiliated with the party, but they often lack confidence in the electoral process, less engagement with news and information than the typical American voter, and believe the political process is difficult and exclusive, the survey found.
“I just see him as corrupt and partisan on both sides,” said Corey Textere, a 26-year-old dock supervisor at a trucking company in Minnesota who backed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 but abstained.
Mr. Texter, who took part in the poll, said he was divided about running in this year’s election because he does not support the bipartisan system when it comes to finding Mr. Trump ahead of the pale.
“I think I can go ahead and vote this year to remove Trump from office,” he said. “I think he’s a little bit more vague than Biden. But personally I am waiting for the total reform of our government. ”
Avatt Alexander, who helped oversee the Knight Foundation’s study, said the readiness of the political world to accept the voting population as fixed has a big impact on American democracy. It ensures that communities with strong influence on political choices are whites, more educated and less representative of the country, he said.
He added that nonviolence is disconnected between the issues that get the most attention and those that prioritize most presidential campaigns.
“A lot of what you hear in terms of party platforms is actually paying attention to the concerns of older Americans,” Ms. Said Alexander. “There are one-size-fits-all messages for Boom Boomers.”
Republicans have slammed the efforts of groups such as the New Georgia Project, sometimes without evidence claiming that the groups’ registration efforts are voter fraud attempts. But even in Georgia, the pressure to win Mr. Trump’s state depends on the maximum turnout among hardline voters in rural, white communities. This includes registering new voters and finding those sitting in 2016.
In the village of McCann, 90 minutes south of Atlanta, Mr. Trump held a rally this month in the hope of keeping the Republican state historically in the red column. Speakers there laughed at Georgia’s changing demographics but said they were confident it would support Mr. Trump.
Georgia Republican Adviser Brian Robinson, who has worked with some of the party’s leading candidates, said he believes Mr. Trump’s supporters are undersampling.
“Trump has an effect: those who vote for Trump will not say they are leaving,” Mr. Robbins said. “Republicans are more likely not to vote.”
He added: “But I’m not saying this is not competitive. It may be a wave election, but I will believe it whenever I see it. “
Towards the Democrats, Mr. Osof and the Rev. Dr. Rap. Raphael G. Senate candidates like Vernock are taking a page from the playbook of Mr. Abrams, Georgia’s governor candidate in 2018, who targeted new voters. In the race against her governance in the rural and suburban regions of the state. Brian Camp.
Mr. Warnock’s campaign spokesman, Terrence Clark, highlighted one such group: Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters in counties like Gwyneth and Cobb near Atlanta. They are the fastest growing demographic group in Georgia.
“It’s not just about keeping white women or suburban voters in the column,” Mr. Clarke said. “It’s also about finding out, where do you turn the dial to get voters to move forward? And you can do that with AAPI voters and Latino voters and new Americans. ”
Mr Osoff said in an interview during his early voting visit to the Atlanta Games: “Georgia is becoming younger and more diverse at the moment. And the political structures that have been invested here over the past decade pay dividends.”
But as always in Georgia and in an American South with a long history of voter repression, the growing demographic has its obstacles in translating into a multicultural political alliance. Just ask Mr. Sanabriya, one of the potential voters who arrived with the Trinity House group, who walked away without voting.
Mr. Sanabriya, 73, did not have a true government identity. He said his ID did not return from the food stamp office fee, where he needed to mail it to get his benefits.
Mr. Sanabaria said, “You have to go through a lot of red tape there. “Even when the mail is slow, the simplest things can be difficult.”
Asked if she thought she would get her ID in time to vote, he declined.
“who knows?” He said.
