What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

More than 98 percent of the expected vote is already reporting in Webster County, according to The New York Times. (On the other hand, that happened very fast — it could just be a reporting error.) Loeffler and Perdue are both winning there 56 percent to 44 percent, whereas Trump won the county 54 percent to 46 percent in November. That would be a good sign for Republicans, although I want to emphasize that this is just one tiny, rural county.

Earlier I bounced the idea that Trump’s antics have harmed Republicans in the race off a top Democratic official involved with organizing in Georgia — an official who doesn’t hesitate to blast Trump, mind you — and I was struck by his response: “Total B.S.”

His sense is that Trump’s infamous boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue holds – that is, if he tells his base to vote for someone, they’ll vote for that someone, even if it isn’t intellectually consistent with claims of voter fraud or rigged elections.

His view is whoever wins or loses will have far more to do with Georgia’s demographic transformation than anything Trump has said or didn’t say about the race or the candidates.

To that end, Democrats say that the things they’re doing differently this time, in terms of door-knocking and registering voters who didn’t vote in November, will be make-or-break for Warnoff and Ossoff. Specifically, Democrats are proud of the door-knocking they’ve done in Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, where they think a few thousand votes could be the difference-maker.

Similar to Sarah, I’m watching the suburban and exurban counties outside Atlanta, like Henry and Gwinnett. Those are the increasingly well-educated and diverse areas that helped deliver the presidency to Biden in November and were part of a larger blue suburban shift across the country. The Democratic candidates will likely need strong turnout and support from those areas to win.