A few thoughts on GA-6 from someone living one district over & helped on the ground
Statewide we generally find a cap on Democrats around 45%, the fact that Ossoff bust through that at 47-48% is progress. The turnout here surpassed off year general elections. I think civically that's good, but reality is there's just more Republicans than Democrats in that district. For outsiders suspicious of the results, here's Occam's razor: First round Ossoff pulled about 48%, other Dems got 1% and the Republican field had 51-52%. They saw ~20 candidates running and were over confident it was going to a runoff, so they were asleep at the wheel. Then they rallied the troops and voted in a red district in a red state and that brought Ossof down from 48% to where he ultimately settled. The polls in the last week showed Handel closing strongly and last 3 polls showed her roughly tied or 2 pts ahead and those that hadn't early voted yet, were planned to vote Handel by about 8-12 points.
A lot of Democrats also probably misread the district in terms of the Trump only winning by 1-2%. This is conservative Newt Gingrich territory and Erick "Never Trump" Erickson's base of support is largely here. I think Trump faired poorly here because there was a contingent that viewed him as not conservative enough and that led to folks on the R side sitting out or voting Johnson instead of Trump which made it look deceptively closer than it actually was for Dems. So feel criticism of Ossoff underperforming Clinton margins here is a bit unfair.
We've got a lot of unregistered voters (and the recent ICE raids made tapping into the Latino community for new voters more challenging) that we still need to tap into moving forward (and the report of 40k new voter registrations not being accounted for is troubling) and demographics are shifting, but we're still looking at probably a decade or so before the demographics will make this a true purple state. So in the interim we either need to tweak our message or understand it's going to take a number of years to expect to produce a win just counting on demographics. Ossoff did about as well as a Democrat is going to do in a conservative district in Georgia. Even the Our Revolution GA folks got behind him (individually) and were helping as canvas captains and phone bankers because Ossoff was best shot for Democrats here, but the gerrymandered districts and 50%+1 thresholds are killers for D success in GA right now.
That said it wasn't a flawless campaign and there's a couple takeaways:
- Live in your district. It's a really easy "othering" technique for Republicans. Fairly easy to mitigate. Ossoff chose not to. They hammered him for it. Don't think it swayed much vote wise, but it's a needless distraction and takes time away from you delivering your message if you're having to counter/explain this instead. (The old "If you're explaining, you're losing" philosophy)
- The Republicans blasted ads that he was tied to Nancy Pelosi/San Fran values. We need an effective counter. "Yes Nancy Pelosi stands for X Y and Z and I'm proud to join her in support of those positions". Every Dem in 2018 is going to get hammered with ads saying "a vote for them is a vote for Nancy Pelosi" whether they are the next Elizabeth Warren or the next Joe Manchin. (I know there's some rumblings of trying to get Pelosi to say she won't run for leadership again to try to mitigate this attack, but I don't think that's effective, as they'll just move on and make it "a vote for X is a vote for Chuck Schumer" instead) All our candidates need to be prepared for how to counter that effectively. Ignoring it is probably a bad strategy.
- If you're spending money on tv ads where the main focus is "go to our website to see our policy" you're just lighting money on fire. If you can't explain the highlights of your position in 30/60/90 seconds, your position is too wonky. Scrap it or keep refining it until you can (also applies to Q&A/debates) . TV is passive viewing. Bring your message to the viewer, don't expect them to put in the work to go to your message.
- I don't have the internal pollings/focus group results on their messaging effectiveness, but the push on the Ossoff tv campaign was primarily on government waste. I know it's a Republican district, but who exactly is that targeted to or resonating with? You are running for the district of the guy who largely wrote the Republican healthcare bill that's projected to take away 20M nationally and 1M Georgians health care that Republican House members jammed through without waiting for the CBO score to understand that impact and without holding any public hearings, and you couldn't cut a single ad on that? I get that it's tough to call out the plan of the guy that the district voted +20 on, but find an angle to at least hang the Republican process around Handel's neck.
-This "we're going to trade 1 blue collar workers for 2 suburban white collar moderate Republicans" plan needs to end. Now. Two very expensive races have now shown that the ratio is completely off.
Now the good takeaway:
These past 5 races are all races that were thought to be safe Republican districts. That Republicans are having to spend money to defend them is a good thing, that they're close is even better. Building Dem infrastructure in these districts is also a very good thing. These were all races stacked against Dems in R+10-R+20 type districts. (I may be slightly off on that range) Yes we're 0-5, and no, moral victories aren't good enough, and we need to put some Ws on the board, but the consistent shift of 15 pts is heartening for 2018 House prospects when we get to start challenging R+1-R+9 type districts. It's important not to get too disheartened and stay active. Some of this is 50 state strategy. We're not going to win everywhere, but giving attention to these R strongholds builds energy for the Ds there to hopefully develop to where these can become competitive places (even if that's only in the far off distance 3+ cycles from now), and helps send message that we're not going to write off swaths of this country and cede it to Republicans. We're going to fight their message and force them to waste some money defending their turf.
But I think in the near term, this probably makes Senate Republicans feel more comfortable voting for their version of AHCA, even if that's a bad misread of public sentiment in the long run. (So if you haven't called your Senators today about AHCA, do so.)
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