Analysts asked by the Oconee County Democratic Party and by the Oconee County Republican Party to offer post-election assessments gave very similar interpretations of the outcomes of the Nov. 5 elections.
The experts said the margin of victory for the Republicans was small, that Georgia remains a swing state, and that elections are likely to be very competitive in the next election cycles.
Audrey Haynes, associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia, told the Oconee County Democrats that the data show that Republican Donald Trump’s margin of victory represents a relatively small change from four years earlier.
Kirk Shook, executive director of the Georgia Nonpublic Postsecondary Education Commission, in his comments to Oconee County Republicans, emphasized that every local Oconee County Republican Party candidate outperformed Trump in Nov. 5 voting.
James Cooper, 10th Congressional District Republican Chair, at that same Oconee County Republican Party meeting, said his analysis of the voting on Nov. 5 suggests that the Republican Party is going to face challenges in 2026 when few incumbents are expected to be on the ballot.
“I know folks don’t like to hear it,” he said. “But we’re in play. We are in play in statewide elections.”
Separate analysis of the gap between Trump’s vote and that for 10th Congressional District incumbent Republican Mike Collins–the next race on the Nov. 5 ballot after the presidential race–shows that the gap Shook identified of 1,216 votes separating Collins from Trump was not unique to Oconee County.
Those comparisons show that Collins outperformed Trump in 17 of the 20 counties or partial counties that make up the 10th Congressional District, with Oconee County’s 4.4 percent gap second only to Newton County’s 5.84 percent.
Haynes At Democratic Party Meeting
Haynes was the featured speaker at the Nov. 21 meeting of the Oconee County Democratic Party at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park. Twenty-five people were in the audience, with another five attending remotely via Zoom.
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| Haynes 11/21/2024 |
“One of the things that automatically happens when you have a loss like that,” Hayes said of the Nov. 5 election where Trump defeated Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, “is there's a lot of hand wringing.”
“So a lot of people have been questioning, what did we do wrong? Is there something wrong with our party? Did we do the wrong thing? How did we lose connection?”
“Well, I'm going to tell you, I think the Democratic Party in and of itself hasn't really done anything wrong,” she said.
“One of the things I remind people is that the electoral college is not something that is an exact replica of how people feel,” Haynes continued.
“If anybody says Georgia's not a swing state,” Haynes said. “Tell them they don't know how to read a map. Because you know, the thing about a swing state is it swings.”
“Last time Biden won. This time, Trump won. Next time it'll probably be somebody different because that usually happens,” she said.
“This was not a walloping–a big win for him (Trump) in Georgia,” she said. “He just smushed through when you actually dig down and look at the numbers. It wasn't that significant of a change from 2020.”
According to the final recount figures, Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes in 2020. In 2024 Trump won by 115,100 votes. Trump increased his vote total from 2,461,854 to 2,663,117, or by 201,263 votes, and his percentage of the vote from 49.3 to 50.7.
Shook At Republican Party Meeting
Kathy Hurley, chair of the Oconee County Republican Party, announced at the beginning of the Nov. 25 meeting that featured speaker Charles Bullock, also a political science professor at the University of Georgia, had told her earlier that day that he had to cancel due to illness.
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| Shook 11/25,2024 |
Hurley said she had called on Shook and Cooper to step in at the last moment to fill the void. Thirty people attended the meeting at the Piedmont Oconee Health Campus Lobby Meeting Room on Jennings Mill Road.
Shook, who represents the Oconee County Republican Party on the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, said he was going to focus in his analysis on Oconee County and on “areas where we have opportunities for growth.”
“Overall, Republicans were able to see gains across the board,” he said. In Oconee County, Shook noted, Trump’s percentage increase from four years ago was 1.6 percentage points. That compares with the 1.4 percent statewide.
“Typically what you see is the top of the ballots gets the most votes,” Shook said. “That’s not what you see here in Oconee County.”
Trump received 18,424 votes, Shook said, compared with the 19,640 that Collins received.
Sen. Bill Cowsert received 19,960 votes, the combined vote in the county for Rep. Houston Gaines and Rep. Marcus Wiedower was 20,006.
Clerk of Superior Court Angela Elder-Johnson received 21,184 votes, Sheriff James Hale received 21,761 votes, Post 1 County Commissioner Mark Thomas received 20,545 votes, Post 4 Board of Education candidate Adam Hammond received 20,352 votes, and Post 5 Board of Education Candidate Brock Toole received 19,500 votes.
All of these candidates listed by Shook were Republicans who won their races against Democratic opposition.
“There’s a lot of Republican votes out here, that didn’t vote top line,” Shook said.
Cooper At Republican Party Meeting
Cooper, 10th Congressional District Republican Chair who followed Shook as speaker at the Nov. 25 Republican Party meeting, said the state shifted between 1.5 percent and 2.0 percent Republican on Nov. 5.
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| Cooper 11/25/2024 |
Nationally, he said, more people voted against Trump than for him. (According to the latest figures from The Cook Report, Trump received 49.8 percent of the vote.)
“But, we were successful, and that is what the Electoral College is for,” he said. (Trump received 312 Electoral College votes, with Harris receiving 226. To win the College, 270 are needed.)
“In two years, we’re in for a war,” Cooper said, turning to the 2026 state elections. “About every state constitutional seat that we have is going to be open because you’re going to have everybody jockeying for positions.”
“The incumbency, that’s a big effect,” he said. “And if we don’t get the vote out in rural Georgia like we have for the last two cycles, in (20)22 and in (20)24, we could lose the state. And you do not want to lose the state and have a Democrat governor in the governor’s mansion.”
“We’ve seen a decrease in the Black male vote,” Cooper said, based on his analysis of what he called the “middle sliver of the state.” Cooper said the decrease in Black male participation in the voting “gave Gov. (Brian) Kemp the numbers” to win in 2022
“A large majority of them are staying home because they didn’t like Stacey (Abrams) and they didn’t like Kamala (Harris),” Cooper said. “But they are not going to stay at home forever.” Both Abrams, Democratic candidate for Governor in 2018 and 2022, and Harris, are Black women.
“That’s a large voting block that’s not voting,” Cooper said. “Don’t get caught up in the successes of this year and get complacent going into next year.”
10th District Analysis
Because Shook focused on Oconee County and Cooper focused on the 10th Congressional District, I decided to extend Shook’s analysis of the gap between Trump’s vote totals and those of Collins in the remaining 19 counties in the 10th Congressional District.
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| Percent For U.S. Rep. Mike Collins Minus Percent For Donald Trump Nov. 5, 2024 (Click To Enlarge) |
I had reported on Trump’s underperformance relative to the other candidates in Oconee County in a post I did on Nov. 10.
The 10th Congressional District consists of 16 complete counties, including Oconee, and four partial counties, which are shared with other Congressional districts. The partial counties are: Gwinnett, Henry, Newton, and Wilkes.
I calculated the percent of vote received by Trump based on the total votes cast in that election, and did the same for Collins.
Across the 20 counties, Collins received on average 1.88 percent points fewer votes than did Collins.
That difference was 5.84 percentage points in the 10 precincts in Newton County in the 10th Congressional district. Oconee County was second, with a 4.40 percent point gap.
Trump led Collins in only Hart and Franklin counties. He was tied in Wilkes County.
In terms of actual number of votes, Clarke County had the largest gap, with Collins receiving 1,466 more votes than Trump, followed by Oconee County, with the 1,216 noted by Shook. The next closest county was Walton, with 621 more votes for Collins than Trump.
In six counties, Trump received more votes than Collins. These were Hart and Franklin and the four counties split among House Districts: Gwinnett, Henry, Newton and Wilkes. I counted Trump’s vote in the precincts that are in the 10th District.
Clearly in those split districts, fewer voters in the precincts in the 10th District cast a ballot in the Congressional race than in the presidential race.
In 2024, Collins received 63.05 percent of the vote, compared with 64.53 percent in 2022.
Video
The video below is of the entire meeting of the Oconee County Democrats on Nov. 21, 2024, at the Oconee County Library.
The Oconee County Democratic Party allows video recording of its meetings, while the Oconee County Republican Party prohibits video and audio recording of its meetings.
I attended the meetings of both parties in November and took notes and still photo images at the Oconee County Republican Party meeting.
Haynes began her comments at 2:18 in the Democratic Party meeting video below.
2 comments:
Abolish the Electoral College
Lots of numbers to please or disappoint everyone.
Apparently, Democrats were told what they wanted to hear and
Republicans heard what they didn't want to hear.
President Trump has a Herculean task in front of him:
A tremendous mess within a brick wall called The Beltway.
Should he succeed, Georgia will no longer be a Swing State.
The only breath left in Democrats will be to continue to feed
their Lapdog Media the same tired disingenuous dogma.
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