How is the Falcon’s 2015 season like Georgia in the 2016 presidential election? Both begin with great promise and quickly fade into oblivion. The Falcons were undefeated through the first five games and had seemingly great prospects for making the playoffs. In the presidential election, thanks to Secretary of State Bryan Kemp’s creation of the March 1 SEC Primary held in multiple southern states, presidential candidates will campaign in Georgia. Thereafter, Georgia and most of the rest of the South will be ignored. Immediately after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, the SEC primary states will become the major attraction for presidential candidates. With Georgia having more delegates than any of the other SEC participants except Texas, we will be courted aggressively. Since Ted Cruz has a home field advantage in Texas, Georgia will be the most sought after March 1 prize.
Georgia’s delegates to the Republican National Convention are up for grabs but our behavior in the November general election is predictable. In every election since 1996, the Republican nominee has won Georgia. Democrats hope that Georgia is on the verge of change as a result of an increasingly diverse electorate, but change is unlikely in 2016.
The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College on the assumption that voters would lack information on the merits of candidates. But with our two-party system and information overload, voters are much better prepared to vote for president.
Georgia is not the only state where results have become predictable. In each of the last six presidential elections 18 states and the District of Columbia voted for the Democratic presidential nominee. Although this could change in 2016, a betting person would assume that they will not after a generation of consistency. Consequently, a Democratic nominee begins with 242 electors; 270 is the magic number to secure the White House. There are another 13 states that have displayed similar consistency in voting for the Republican nominee. However many of these have small populations giving a Republican only 102 electors. Georgia is not among those 13 since it narrowly voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. However, Georgia and four other states have voted for the Republican in five of the last six elections. Even adding the electors from these states only gets the Republican nominee to 158 electors.
After March 1, rarely will presidential contenders visit Georgia. When the general election heats up in the fall, presidential nominees will concentrate all their efforts on the handful of toss-up states. The richest toss-up is Florida with 29 electors which combined with the 242 base can seal an election for the Democrats. Next in terms of electors is Ohio with 20 followed by North Carolina with 15 and Virginia with 13. These states will attract sycophant-like pursuit in personal campaigning and advertising on television. Although Georgia is the eighth most populous state, we get far less attention than toss-up states with much smaller populations like New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado and Iowa.
This Georgia will be treated like a wealthy, aging dowager courted and easily coned by an insincere, suave, young man. Candidates will fly into the Atlanta airport, travel in a cavalcade to a downtown hotel for a fundraiser, shake hands, pose for pictures and in less than two hours be airborne as they rush off to another fundraiser or to campaign in a coveted swing states.
Since Georgia is one of the more than 40 states taken for granted in a presidential election, we have little opportunity to meet and see up close either of the presidential nominees. Our television stations get only a tiny fraction of the money spent on TV ads in our toss-up neighbors, Florida and North Carolina. If Georgia were in play the administration might direct more federal dollars to our military bases and other federal facilities. The parties would hire campaign workers to spread the message and promote turnout. In 2008, when Obama thought he had a chance in Georgia, he had 33 campaign offices manned by scores of field workers.
A movement is underfoot that would make Georgia worthy of the attention of presidential candidates long after the spring primary. If the Electoral College’s winner-take-all approach were replaced by a national popular vote, candidates would campaign for Georgia’s more than five million registered voters. Granted, Georgia would not be the most sought after since the seven more populous states, and especially the one-party super states of California, Texas and New York, would also become much more important.
To supplant the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment. As an alternative, the National Popular Vote effort asks states to agree to give all of their electors to the candidate who wins the national popular vote.
A number of states have already embraced this proposition. Nothing will change until enough states have signed on to this bipartisan effort to account for the 270 electors needed to choose a president. Adoption of this approach would eliminate the possibility of repeating 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but narrowly lost the Electoral College vote. Georgia’s General Assembly may be asked to join this movement.
Charles. S. Bullock, III, is the Richard B. Russell Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. His most recent book is The Three Governors Controversy (University of Georgia Press, 2015).
