The Georgia Runoff, Part Two

Where would coverage of the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia be without a nice colored map?

May 20, 2014 GOP primary for the U.S. Senate in Georgia by county and winner's share of vote.

Note: The coloring scheme for the map is a little more complicated than usual. In Georgia's primary there were at least three candidates who had a better-than-30% shot at winning the nomination: eventual winner David Perdue (red), runner-up Rep. Jack Kingston (blue), and third place finisher, former Secretary of State Karen Handel (green). Two more candidates--Reps. Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun, who finished in fourth and fifth respectively--had little chance at actually winning the nomination but polled strongly enough to present a serious threat of a spoiler effect to the top three candidates. Unfortunately, creating consistent color gradients is much easier for two- or three-way races than it is for four- or five-way races because we can assign one candidate to each primary color. After three it gets messy. So in the map above, if a county was won by Rep. Gingrey or Rep. Broun, I've colored it in as the lightest shade of the runner-up (so, for example, Lincoln County was won by Rep. Broun with Perdue in second, so on the map it's colored in light pink).

The point of the map is still there: the primary, at least, was divided regionally, with Perdue performing pretty well statewide except in the coastal plain, which is located in Rep. Kingston's 1st district. Rep. Kingston racked up huge margins in his district and in the surrounding counties, compensating for his weak performance upstate. The regional divide is sharp enough that we can expect it to persist to some degree in the runoff. 

However, the red/blue divide on the map obscures Sec. Handel's strong second-place finishes all over the northern half of the state. We can draw two reasonable yet opposite conclusions from this. Stated simply:

1. Rep. Kingston's weak performance in the north and central parts of the state (he placed below Sec. Handel in many counties) can be explained by a Karen Handel spoiler effect, where the Secretary of State took votes in the north that might otherwise have gone to Rep. Kingston. With Sec. Handel out of the race, those voters will vote for Rep. Kingston this time around, if they bother to go vote at all. Or....
2. Because Sec. Handel performed most strongly in the north, her voter base shared more with that of Perdue than with that of Rep. Kingston. Now that she's no longer in the race, her supporters will be more likely to vote for Perdue this time around, if they bother to go vote at all.

And because this is a Republican primary runoff featuring two fairly similar mainline conservatives (as it would not had either Rep. Gingrey or Rep. Broun made the top two), it's somewhat difficult to determine which of the two conclusions is more likely based on ideology. However, I've already mentioned that one major change in the dynamics of the race has favored Rep. Kingston: the two runner-runner-ups, Sec. Handel and Rep. Gingrey, both endorsed him. These two endorsements make me inclined to believe that it's scenario #1 that's closer to what will happen.

Polling tells a different story that leads to the same conclusion of a Kingston victory. Immediately after the May 20 primary, PPP released a poll showing Rep. Kingston ahead 12 points; a McLaughlin poll the next week showed a 14-point lead. The poll history therefore suggests that despite Perdue's first place finish in the primary, voters overall preferred Rep. Kingston to Perdue all along: had it just been the two of them in the May 20 primary, Rep. Kingston would be the nominee now. And that doesn't seem to have changed all too much in the intervening two months, which is why this race still LEANS KINGSTON.

If you're a Georgia Republican reading this, the polls close in less than two hours. Go vote!