Challenging numbers

Democratic Opportunity and Challenges Exist

There are serious problems in our most Democratic Counties with both registration and GOTV efforts that have to be understood and corrected if we are going to win ANY statewide races.

The votes clearly exist to be truly competitive in statewide races. Our challenge is, as it has been for the last 32 years, getting Democratic voters to the polls to vote for Democrats. The data suggests that as a party we have not cracked the code. And this ought to be the heart of our concern.

• Of the 825,000 registered voters in these 31 firewall counties who did not show up in 2012, 72% were in Democratic Precincts. Of the other 235,000 non-voters from GOP precincts in Democratic Counties, 40,000 were African American and another 82,000 were white women.

• Voting Age Population in our firewall counties has increased by 250,000 people, but Democratic vote totals in these 31 counties has increased by only 110,000 in gubernatorial years. At the same time, we have seen a substantial shift in the Distribution of the GOP vote. In 2002, the GOP got 25% if their vote total for the 31 counties. By 2012 they were down to 21%. Virtually all the shift in GOP distribution has been to exurban Atlanta Counties. Those Counties have grown the most rapidly over the last decade and have come to represent their firewall.

• Turnout in our Tier I counties presents our most significant challenge. To offset the migration and growth in core GOP counties (GOP totals jumped by 330,000 in those counties over the past 12 years); we have got to get greater participation levels in our core. 

Our Challenge is that it turns out that the more Democratic a precinct is, the lower the participation in the political process. In the 566 most Democratic precincts in the 2010 Mid-terms, we saw a 43% Turnout compared to a statewide Turnout of 48%. In 2012, we saw a 67% Turnout in those deeply blue precincts as opposed to the statewide turnout level of 72%.

More troubling is in the Voter Conversion Rate (actual voters among those newly registered). 

• In 2008, in these 31 counties we registered some 200,000 new voters. The conversion rate for President Obama's first election was a
  
  respectable 65% for these core counties, but in 2010 only 27% of those voters showed up and last November 49% of these voters turned out. 

• In the run-up to 2010, there were 65,000 new registrants, but only 15,000 showed up. That is less than a 25% turnout. 

• In looking at 2012 there was a turnout among newly registered voters of 61% comparerd to a statewide  turnout of 72%

So we are  doing a fine job  at Registering voters (Though a lot of that  is certainly  related to  the efforts of  Obama For America)  but  for a variety  of reasons  we are having great difficulty   in getting those  new voters  to the polls.  

All of thes issues  beg the question: 

Who's got the ball  and  what are they doing with it?

I am not inclined to point a finger in any  particular direction  but it seems to me  that  the ability to  identify new  and sporaric voters in Democratic counties and  motivate them  to get to the polls has to be someone's  responsibilty and no one is doing a particularly good job at it.