Baker County won the award as the most evenly split county in Tuesday’s election. county in Tuesday’s election.
Senate winner David Perdue and loser Michelle Nunn tied with 484 votes in the southwest Georgia county of 3,451 souls. In the governor’s race, incumbent Nathan Deal received 491 votes, while Jason Carter finished a mere 13 behind.
The rest of Georgia, though, showed stark divisions. In their dominant victories, Republicans Perdue and Deal built strong margins in rural, suburban and exurban areas. Democrats Nunn and Carter rolled up big numbers in major cities and their surrounding urban cores.
The electorate also showed a wide split in gender and race. Nunn and Carter drew a large share of women voters, while Deal and Perdue won overwhelmingly among men. Associated Press exit polls showed the Republicans garnering more than 70 percent of the white electorate, and Nunn and Carter taking a heavy majority of black voters.
While the Democratic Party made progress in registering new voters and boosting turnout, those efforts fell short as Perdue and Deal each amassed 53 percent victory totals.
After months of commentary that Georgia is turning from red to purple, the Republicans’ blowout showed that no matter how much demographics shift in the Democrats’ favor, they still need to get those potential voters to the polls. They also must broaden their appeal to white voters.
“One of their goals was to increase the size of the electorate, and that didn’t happen,” said Kennesaw State University political scientist Kerwin Swint about the Democrats’ defeat. “They need to do a better job of turnouts in the future.”
Nunn and Carter “did very poorly with white voters. That made a big difference this year.”
President Obama’s unpopularity in Georgia, especially among whites, handicapped Nunn. Perdue in his TV ads, debate remarks and campaign appearances relentlessly tied Nunn to Obama’s policies.
“She should have defined more differences between herself and the president,” Swint said. “She was trying to walk a middle line, trying to keep the Democratic base motivated, yet be independent.”
To broaden their message, “Democrats are going to have to talk more about the economy and jobs,” Swint said. “The Republicans did that.”
Swint said that Deal, despite Georgia’s high unemployment rate, “did a reasonably good job saying that job growth has occurred, that they have a handle on it.”
While Carter drew attention to unemployment, he failed to express a clear jobs plan. For much of the campaign, he focused on education, while Deal zeroed in on jobs, as the AJC pointed out.
Perdue also emphasized the economy, criticizing the affordable health care act from a business perspective and decrying federal regulations. His background as a Fortune 500 CEO also apparently impressed Georgians.
Meanwhile, Nunn attacked Perdue for outsourcing positions to foreign countries, but didn’t offer compelling job-creation strategies.
Swint said that Nunn’s outsourcing attacks on Perdue were probably the best week of her campaign, but they came too soon, allowing Perdue to blunt the issue.
“Outsourcing was a scary word to some, with all of the media coverage,” Swint said. “The Perdue ads helped provide some of the background.”
Nunn targeted outsourcing “about three weeks before the election,” he said. “She probably should have waited to give him less time to get the context out there.”
In the end, Nunn’s bid to paint Perdue as an uncaring businessman backfired. “She was out there portraying him to Georgians as a version of Mitt Romney,” Swint said. “A lot of Georgians liked Mitt Romney. I’m not sure it was that effective.”
For the future, “Democrats need to engage,” he said. “They have to motivate minority voters. At the same time, they have to realize that Georgia is a conservative state for now, and they have to moderate their views on issues.”
Avoiding the dreaded Jan. 6, runoff, Perdue will take office with the rest of the 114th Congress, preserving his seniority. According to Wikipedia, his is seventh on the seniority list among new senators. Other newcomers served in the U.S. House, giving them a seniority edge, while Tuesday’s election was Perdue’s first.
When it comes to family ties, Nunn lost Houston County, the home of both Perdue and her father, former Sen. Sam Nunn, by 8,546 votes. Meanwhile, Carter carried his grandfather Jimmy Carter’s Sumter County by 770 votes.
Both the former president and senator campaigned for their progeny at the end, in retrospect a sad, anachronistic reminder of Democrats’ glory days.
