When it comes to the much-prophesied “blue wave” supposedly coming November, contradictory evidence keeps coming in. On the same day a shock Reuters poll put Republicans up in the generic ballot, Democratic primary voters in Georgia turned out to support Stacey Abrams in big numbers.
The Reuters poll, touted by President Trump on Tuesday night, could well turn out to be a fluke – nobody should ever take a single poll as anything more than a datapoint to be combined with other polls. But according to the Real Clear Politics average, Democrats’ advantage was narrowing even without this Reuters survey.
Polling, of course, is not a perfect science. Democrats can point to actual voter numbers, rather in poll data, over in Georgia. There, Democrats crushed their previous turnout levels in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary. Voters cast more than 553,000 ballots in the contest between Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans, ultimately electing Abrams by a staggering 53-point margin. Steve Kornacki of NBC News pulled the numbers from Georgia’s last contested Democratic gubernatorial primary, revealing roughly 395,500 Democratic voters cast ballots back in 2010. That’s a big jump, though it’s worth remembering Democrats controlled Washington at that point. Republican turn out was down compared to 2010, when 680,500 ballots were cast; around 608,000 Georgians voted in the GOP gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, according to Kornacki.
Meanwhile, in Texas, turnout seems to have declined substantially in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, according to the Texas Tribune.
As the summer campaign season kicks into gear, and debate swirls around the possibility of a blue wave washing away Republican majorities this November, both parties should probably be more cautious than optimistic. Local barometers are better than national ones, and the House map is very different than the Senate map. A lot can change in six months as well. But as it stands now, neither party should take their ostensible advantages for granted.
