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CHAMBLISS HAD HISTORY ON HIS SIDE
There were many explanations floated
for Saxby Chambliss' success in this month's
Senate runoff election. He raised a lot of
money. He beefed up his get-out-the-vote
operations for the runoff. He ran wave after
wave of TV attack ads that hammered his
opponent, Jim Martin, during the runoff. He
had the star power of celebrity Republicans
like Sarah Palin and John McCain, who cam
paigned for Chambliss during the runoff
period. All of those factors helped Chambliss
win another six-year term, but the simplest
explanation for his runoff victory can be
summed up in one word: history.
In all of Georgia's general election runoffs
over the past two decades, history shows
that Republican voters do a better job
of coming back to the polls than do
Democrats. That pattern held true
in this election as Chambliss and
Lauren "Bubba" McDonald, a GOP
candidate for the Public Service
Commission, both enjoyed land
slide runoff victories over their
Democratic opponents.
There are strong histori
cal parallels between 2008, when
Chambliss defeated Martin, and 1992,
when Republican Paul Coverdell came back in
the runoff to topple Democratic Sen. Wyche
Fowler. Both elections we r e held in the same
year that a Democrat was elected president
(Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008).
In both elections, the voter turnout for the
runoff amounted to about 56 percent of the
number who voted in the general election.
In both elections, the president-elect tried
to help the Democratic candidate. Clinton
came to Georgia to campaign for Fowler.
While Obama did not travel to Georgia, he did
radio ads and robo-calls for Martin. In both
elections, Republican voters were anxious to
push back against the election of a popular
Democrat for president and came out to the
polls in heavy numbers for the runoff.
Coverdell trailed Fowler by 35,000 votes
in the general election but won the runoff
by more than 16,000 votes, a turnabout of
51,371 in the margin. Chambliss, who finished
just below 50 percent in the general election,
increased his advantage over Martin from
109,671 votes to more than 318,000 votes, a
huge improvement.
Republicans had the added incentive of
pushing back against a president-elect who
was not only a Democrat but the country's
first African-American president as well.
"The Georgia electorate is easily the most
racially polarized of any state we polled regu
larly during the 2008 election cycle," said Tom
Jensen of Public Policy Polling (PPP), one of
several firms whose runoff polls underesti
mated the turnout by white Republicans.
You could predict the outcome
of the runoff election by compar
ing the early voting statistics. In
the general election, nearly 35
percent of the early ballots were
cast by black voters who were
obviously enthused by the pros
pects of voting for Obama. That
heavy turnout helped Obama run a
closer-than-expected race against
McCain and enabled Maitin to finish
within three points of Chambliss.
The early voting for the runoff election
was another story entirely. The percentage of
black voters dropped to less than 23 percent.
The proportion of white male voters, who are
more likely to vote Republican than any other
group, increased from less than 30 percent
to nearly 36 percent of the early vote. Those
were all signs that Chambliss was headed for a
big victory.
In the end, Republican voters came back to
the polls and Democrats didn't. With that bit
of history on his side, it would have been hard
for Chambliss to lose.
Tom Crawford
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia
Report, ap Internet news service at www.gareport.com
that covers government and politics in Georgia.
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