Why Democrats Fail on Election Day in Georgia - Part I

A HISTORY OF FAILED APPROACHES
The challenges we face as a party are not insurmountable. What is clear however is that the top-down strategies we have developed and run with over the last decade have not worked. There are many reasons for that problem
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The State Party’s most significant challenge is the lack of a significant field organization and a stark failure of what goes for infrastructure to deliver the vote for our candidates. Our strategies fail because we do not have sufficient boots on the ground in enough places or the right places or the right time to get things done. A realistic assessment of what we have been able to achieve using a “159 County Strategy” or a Metro Atlanta Strategy or even a Coordinated Campaign Strategy is that they have not worked at a statewide level. 

The main reason for this is that the strategy’s success is premised largely on the notion that the county parties and traditional allies, lie Unions, Civil Rights organizations, church-based organizations and the campaigns themselves will be able to muster the resources to wage an effective Get Out the Vote effort. For the last 12 years at least this game plan has failed, mortally.

The State Party keeps trying this in various forms but it continues to come up short.

The most recent iteration was a call for 5% greater Democratic turnout in every Georgia County -- a seemingly achievable goal -- to close the gap with the Republican Standard Bearer and support down ballot candidates. It was a call that went largely unanswered.

• Fifteen Counties, less than one in ten, achieved the goal and the net effect was 7,633 votes compared to 2008.

• 36 counties, less than one in four, got better Democratic numbers than in 2008. The difference amounted to less than 13,500 votes.

• Only 1/3rd of those 31 most reliable Democratic Counties did better than they did 4 years ago and the 31 combined represented a net loss of 50,000 votes compared to 2008.

The 2012 numbers suggest a significant problem with GOTV efforts using this method. To be clear, strategies employed early in the decade fared no better and there is little to suggest that 2014 will be any different. Conventional wisdom and common sense suggests that Georgia Democrats are likely to lose all statewide races in 2014 unless we try a new approach.

The State Party does not have the infrastructure that is necessary to go out and beat the bushes to get the needed voters to the polls and it has tended to rely on either the county parties or the Unions and Civil Rights group to get out he votes, but it clearly has not been enough. We need to understand the nature of the problem.