Is Georgia In Play For Obama?

I think Obama will motivate the 18-24 crowd to vote, because he's such a radically different nominee than we've had in my lifetime. Every other election has been old white guy against old white guy, or rich white guy against old white guy, or some variation of those combinations. Obama doesn't look establishment and he's been orating non-establishment since his campaign started. Given a different choice, the young voters will have a motivation that simply hasn't been there before for their group. Blacks are going to vote in unprecedented numbers this time.

 

Considering the Dems had a contested primary in Georgia, I'm not surprised they had more voters than the GOP did.

I think Ensign's being a bit pessimistic here. I suspect the number will be in the mid-40s.

No question this should be a Democratic year: It's their turn, after all. But the presidential election could be a major exception.

 

Are you memory impaired?

Both parties had their primaries in Georgia on Feb. 5, and both were contested. In fact, Huckabee won with 34% of the vote. Between them, Huckabee and McCain received 630,000 votes. Obama got 700,000 by himself.

In Fulton County, the Republicans got a total of 60,000 votes. Obama got 113,000.

 

Are you idiotic? Fulton County is Atlanta. Democrats run well in Atlanta. Guh.

Again, not big on predictions this far out. But I wouldn't bet your next mortgage payment on Obama winning Georgia. Then again, you think your man is going to win 49 states, so ...

 

I'll tell you I spent a good chunk of my day watching the Libertarian Convention a week or so ago. It was interesting TV on CSPAN.

One thing is for sure, Barr wasn't a unanimous choice. A solid group said screw him. The only reason he was chosen was because they believe a "big name" as a Libertarian would actually help them make a bigger statement. The true Libertarians don't seem so down with him at all.

 

Did you totally miss the point and fail to read my previous posts? Obama isn't going to win 49 states; I doubt he'll win Georgia. The voting totals in the primaries, however, indicate that there's a gold mine of potential Obama votes in that state. If he has a good ground game going there and they get the right turnout on election day, it's a state that he could conceivably win.

 

Here's some interesting food for thought on Georgia, OK?

In 2004, Bush won the state with 1.914 million votes to Kerry's 1.366 million. So that's a difference of 548,000 votes in an election where 3.28 million people voted.

Now, let's just take the Atlanta area, which which were Kerry's strongest counties. Kerry won Fulton County 199,436 to 134,372. He won Clayton 56,113 to 23,106. He won DeKalb 200,787 to 73,570

So Kerry won those three counties by 225,000 votes and lost the rest of the state by 773,000. But the real key number is that Kerry got 456,000 votes out of those three counties.

OK, so compare that with Obama in the 2008 primary. In DeKalb, he got 113,000 votes. In Fulton, he got 106,000 votes. In Clayton, he got 36,000 votes. So that's 255,000 votes just for Obama in those three counties, while Hillary Clinton got 75,000 votes.

So just for argument's sake, that's about 325,000 solid Obama voters there just in a primary.

Obama could win the three Atlanta counties by 400,000-500,000 votes easily. I would not expect McCain to perform as well as Bush did in the rest of Georgia. If that happens, then you're talking about a fairly close race.

 

I did the same thing with North Carolina, by the way, and the results were even more favorable to Obama.

In 2004, Kerry had 454,000 votes from Mecklenburg, Orange, Durham and Wake counties but only netted 56,700 (he actually lost Wake by 7,000 votes). Bush won the rest of the state by 428,000 votes.

In this year's primary, Obama got 290,000 votes from those four counties. I would expect him to do, far, far better than Kerry in the general election. I think doubling the vote total is conservative in the general election. If he does that, McCain's margin for error in the rest of the state is very small.

 

And if for some reason everything goes to the Dems like 1992, remember what happened two years later. The mood of the country has turned decidedly against the GOP, but 2010 could be a whoooooole different story.

 

I hate to break it to you, but Obama isn't going to win in Georgia. Nor will he win in Florida. He should put more emphasis on South Carolina than Georgia. It has the same percentage of black constituents as Georgia (29 percent) despite trailing the Peach State in electoral votes 15-8. Plus, there are more northern liberal transplants dotting that coast line than you're likely to find in the whole of Georgia.

 

Jesus, why don't we just call it now and get it over with, if only to get you to shut the hell up?

 

Really? More northerners in South Carolina than Georgia? What are they doing there? (besides living in second homes, in which case they probably vote in their home state). Then there's the military vote. It would seem Obama's got better odds in Georgia, and, as you noted, twice as many electoral votes to win there. North Carolina, too.