State Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Savannah, joined an emergency Zoom call with about 70 other Black Georgia faith leaders Monday night to discuss their concerns about the state’s latest early voting figures.
Most prominent leaders of the state’s Black faith community have thrown their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris in her White House race against former President Donald Trump. The latest early voting data has given them cause for concern about Harris’ chances of winning Georgia’s 16 crucial electoral college votes in a battleground state that was decided by less than 12,000 votes four years ago.
The good news, according to Gilliard and other leaders of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, is that more than 3 million people have already voted, as of 11:20 a.m. Tuesday. That means more than 42% of the estimated 7.2 million active voters on the state’s registration rolls have already cast their ballots, a record-setting pace, according to the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Higher turnout rates usually benefit Democrats in competitive races.
“As of Monday at 12:30 p.m., Georgians surpassed the 2.73 million mark for early voting with 2,739,787 check-ins, shattering previous early voting performance,” the GOP secretary of state boasted in an emailed statement.
Among those voters are more than 782,000 Black Georgians, whose turnout rate has dropped from more than 29% on the record-setting first day of early voting — when many Black seniors traveled to the polls with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, boosting the state’s overall early voting turnout rate — to about 25% since then.
That’s the bad news for Harris and down-ballot Democrats, according to Gilliard and other prominent GLBC members who spoke with Capital B Atlanta on Monday. North Carolina, the other Southern region battleground state, has also seen low Black voter turnout during its early voting period.
Black folks, who overwhelmingly support Democrats in most elections, comprise about 31% of Georgia’s overall population. Elected leaders and political observers say Democrats looking for a guaranteed win in statewide office races in Georgia usually need to hit a 30% Black turnout rate. And Black turnout during early voting is usually higher than it is on Election Day.
“Twenty-five percent is low,” Georgia House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon, told Capital B Atlanta on Monday. “We need it more around 31%.”
Gilliard said he began seeing Democratic Party warning signs last week in Savannah, where nearly 52% of residents were Black in 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The chair of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, who also serves as pastor of the Family Life Center in nearby Garden City, estimates only about 35% of early voters in Chatham County were Black as of about two days ago.
“A little bit over 50% were white,” Gilliard said. “That’s concerning because we’re in a city that’s predominantly African American.”
On Sunday, at the Savannah Civic Center, a major early voting polling location, Gilliard said he saw about 800 people show up to vote.
“I thought that was [down a lot] because this is Sunday and this is the major place,” Gilliard said. “We should have probably had about maybe 2,000.”
Early voting ends at close of business on Friday. Gilliard and Beverly said it’s clear to them that more Republicans have answered Trump’s call for his supporters to participate in early voting.
“[The latest early voting] totals are pretty outstanding, but it seems Republicans are taking advantage of early voting more than before,” Beverly said.
Prominent leaders in the Black faith community spent Monday evening strategizing ways to get more Black people to the polls. One of their takeaways was the need to increase campaign visibility and direct engagement with Black voters with more door-to-door canvassing and posting more printed signs in Black communities.
“We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of signs that have not been put out,” Gilliard said of the Savannah metro area. “We need sign wavers, anything that’s visible that’s going to let people know we’re trying to earn their vote and encourage them [to vote].”
It’s possible many of the white voters who are voting early this year are casting ballots for Harris. Democrats note they’ve made gains with suburban white voters in recent election cycles, especially white women. Women of all races comprise about 53% of early voters in Georgia so far. And Trump has seen his support among working-class white men slip a few points in recent polls.
It’s also possible that the state’s latest early voting figures don’t fully reflect the rate of Black turnout, according to state Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn. The three-term incumbent is running for reelection in one of Georgia’s few competitive state House races against Republican challenger Elvia Davila, a small-business owner.
Clark noted on Monday that the secretary of state’s election data hub tracks “active voters,” those who have participated in the last two general elections.
“[Focusing on] active voters is discounting a lot of people who may show up for this particular election that normally do not vote,” Clark said on Monday. “I think there are a lot of people who are ‘inactive [voters]’ that are going to show up this time. And that’s actually being reflected in what we’re seeing with this record turnout.”
