CORRECTED*: Alloy Protect reports show mail-in ballot and voter file demographic trends defining the tight race in Georgia
By Allison Abbott, Brianna Duff, and Susanna Supalla
As the counting of ballots in Georgia continues in a closer-than-expected race, Alloy Protect reports are providing insights into the vote by mail numbers that are defining the results and the voter registration dynamics that shaped the state in the final weeks before the election.
Highlights:
- Vote by Mail: Of the 1.61M* voters who returned ballots by mail in Georgia, 1.3M were Accepted, 2.7K were Rejected, and of those rejected, 44% were cast by Black voters and 36% were cast by White voters, according to our analysis of data released by the Secretary of State on November 6th.
- Voter Registration: In the last voter file update before the election, young voters 18–29 made up a whopping 48% of newly registered voters.
Vote By Mail Report as of 11/6
In this historic election season, we know the importance of fast access to mail-in ballot data — and that understanding the demographic breakdowns of these mail-in votes is of critical importance for election protection.
We know voter-level data is more critical than ever in curing ballots and protecting voters, which is why we merged the demographic information found in Georgia’s voter file with the Georgia mail-in ballot data and transformed the data to produce this voter-level, rather than ballot-level, report.
Read on for the top highlights, or access the full report and raw, aggregated data here:
As of 11/6, of the 1.61M voters who cast ballots by mail:
- 1.3M were Accepted
- 301K were Canceled
- 2.7K were Rejected
- 1K were Spoiled
Demographic Breakdowns
As of 11/6*, mail-in voters fell along the following demographics:
44% of rejected received mail-in ballots were cast by Black voters.
Black voters made up 31% of received mail-in ballots and 30% of the Oct. 26 GA voter file.
16% of rejected received mail-in ballots were from Fulton County.
13% of rejected received mail-in ballots were from Cobb County.
42% of received mail-in ballots were cast by voters 65+ years old.
By comparison, 12% of received mail-in ballots were cast by voters 18–29 years old.
57% of received mail-in ballots were cast by women.
By comparison, 42% were cast by men, and <1% were cast by voters who did not report gender.
A quick note on our data: the report linked here reflects mail-in ballot data received by Alloy on 11/6/20 and SOS voter file data received by Alloy on 10/26/20. The counts included in this report represent voters and the status of the latest mail-in ballot that they cast. Some voters had earlier ballot requests that they may have never received, or that were otherwise rejected, canceled, or spoiled. We analyzed the latest mail-in ballot cast by each voter.
Voter File Updates
At Alloy we’re committed to making data more accessible because it’s fundamental to strengthening our democracy, and we’re proud to be working with partners dedicated to protecting the right to vote. We know staying on top of changes to the voter file, particularly when it comes to list maintenance and dropped voters, is critical to election protection efforts.
We’ve combined insights from our Georgia Protect reports to look at the trends in the final months of the election. Among the highlights, younger voters registered in large numbers — 41.63% of newly registered voters — in Georgia from August 2nd through October 24th. During that period, a total of 210,504 Georgians registered to vote, while 22,498 voters were dropped from the official rolls.
Of voters dropped in that period, meaning they no longer appeared on the files of local election officials, 53.44% were 65+. Other highlights included:
55.36% of those dropped from Aug 2 to Oct 24 were White voters.
White voters also made up 49.23% of newly added voters in the same window.
28.27% of those newly added from Aug 2 to Oct 24 were Black voters.
Latino voters represented 6.06% of newly added voters and Asian-American voters represented 4.52% of newly added voters.
More About Alloy Protect
Protect reports are provided by Alloy to our partners and election protection organizations and include top-level insights on voter file changes by county and key demographics. These reports also include anonymized data on newly registered and dropped voters, where dropped voters are defined as those who previously appeared in a state election official file but do not appear on the most recent update. Alloy provides Protect reports for FL, GA, MI, NC, NV, OH, PA and WI.
You can request access to our most recent Georgia Protect report here, and can sign up on our website to start receiving these reports in your inbox.
Susanna Supalla is a Staff Data Scientist at Alloy alongside Allison Abbott, a Senior Designer and Researcher, and Brianna Duff, a Product Manager. Together, they lead the Protect team and help get voter file insights to Alloy partners.
CORRECTION DETAILS:
*In a prior version of this Medium post, we reported there were 2.2K voters with a ballot status of rejected, 204K canceled, and 1.51M voters who cast a mail-in ballot, inadvertently leaving out ballots that the Secretary of State reported with NO date of receipt; the actual number of voters with resolved mail-in ballots on 11/06/2020 was 1.61M, incorporating those without a date of receipt, including 301K canceled and 2,663 voters with a ballot status of rejected. The numbers above in this post now reflect the corrected count.
