Why Ossoff’s Loss in GA-6 Matters (A Lot)

While the results are not yet official or certified, it appears that Handel beat Ossoff by a margin of nearly four points in the Georgia 6 special election. In any other election, that 4-point margin would be seen by Democrats as a moral victory, proof that their message resonated with voters. Taking that one step further, Democrats would be emboldened to approach the next special election with more enthusiasm and increased levels of national funding. Unfortunately, GA-6 was anything but a simple special election. Why so?

• Around 60% of GA-6 voters are college graduates. College graduates nationwide chose Clinton over Trump by a 9-point margin. It’s possible that Ossoff won college graduates by a similar margin, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
• Compared to the national electorate, GA-6 is whiter (not helpful for Ossoff), but also wealthier (advantage unclear), as well as more Asian and Hispanic (generally more favorable to Democrats). We will need to see how well Handel and Ossoff fared with these elements of GA-6’s electorate.
• Ossoff performed well in the early vote, securing a 14% lead over Handel. That lead completely evaporated (and became negative) on election day, with Handel capturing nearly 40% more votes than Ossoff. This should already have been one of the 2016 presidential lessons learned: getting out the early vote MUST be supplemented by similar efforts on election day. Something about the Ossoff campaign or the DNC’s apparatus (or both) fell remarkably short.
• Ossoff appears to have garnered the support of around 48% of the voters in the June 20 special election, exactly the same level of support he received in the original April 18 election. This is important. In two months with millions of dollars in additional funding, Ossoff and the DNC didn’t move the needle at all. In retrospect, if the DNC had known it wouldn’t gain even one additional percent of the voting public’s trust, would it have spent as much money as it did?
• As I noted in a previous article, the Kansas 4 special election had a Democrat coming within seven points of the Republican winner, even though Trump won that district by a 27-point margin. In Montana, the Republican candidate won by a margin of 6 points in a state Trump won by 20 points. That dynamic was nowhere to be seen in GA-6. Trump won GA-6 by a 1.5-point margin, and Handel managed to add nearly 2.5 points to that margin with her victory. In short, there was no Democratic gains in GA-6, and in fact, an argument could be made that Democrats lost ground to Republicans.

What lessons should Democrats take away from the GA-6 election? More sophisticated pundits will no doubt craft more eloquent postmortems than I can. From a layman’s perspective, though, the Democrats, including the DNC, must:

• Hone their message and customize it per district and state. While the Democrats would prefer that all candidates hew to same platform with no deviation whatsoever, that is not how elections are won anymore. Candidates need to have the flexibility to pick and choose elements from the Democratic platform that will appeal to the broadest possible slice of the electorate.
• There is an enthusiasm and turnout gap that needs to be addressed. We already saw this in the 2016 presidential election, and here we are, seven months later, having the same conversation. For the sake of the country, I hope we’re not hashing out this same concern after the 2018 midterms.
• Make smarter and earlier investment decisions, and use the power of data to know when to turn the spigot on and off. This one is going to require some major analytics and even then, a clear cut answer may not be apparent. The conventional wisdom is that more money means more votes. However, we don’t know the full effect of that funding, in terms of how much it generated in terms of Democratic vs. Republican turnout. What if each additional Democratic vote also netted an additional Republican vote, because Republicans were motivated to prevent a Democratic victory? What if less money had been spent by Ossoff and the DNC? What would the margin of loss (or perchance victory) have been?
• Take more time up front to recruit the strongest candidates. Ossoff started out the race as a bit of an unknown, a dark horse if you will. Once he started to gain some traction, then the DNC and other establishment folks started paying attention (and dollars). In retrospect, though, was Ossoff the strongest candidate? In other words, was a 30-year old with five years experience as a congressional and national security staffer the best choice to compete against Handel, who has already spent seven years in elective office, including a stint as Georgia’s secretary of state? Let’s not forget that Ossoff didn’t even live in GA-6 (oops!).

As I said, I think smarter folks will come up with an even more comprehensive list than this. What’s important is that we analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what could have gone better. Then, rather than wailing and gnashing our teeth, as we Democrats are often so good at doing, we need to take action. Meaningful action, even if it means replacing a national platform in favor of regional platforms that will attract more voters. We can’t afford to delay or get this wrong. Too much is at stake, especially with 2018 midterms looming.