There’s a lot to celebrate and learn from in the aftermath of this historic election — but first, there’s more work to be done. Both of the Georgia Senate races are going to runoff elections, with control of the upper chamber in the balance. Even in the long-shot scenario where the Alaska senate race goes to the Dems, we still need to win one of the GA seats to get control of the Senate. (Update: AK-SEN is now predicted to go to the GOP.)
We need to move quickly, because time is short: GA voters can request absentee ballots beginning November 18th, the registration deadline for the GA runoffs is December 7th, and early in-person voting begins on December 14th. Election day for the runoffs is January 5th.
GOTV will be crucial in these final weeks. The last two times Georgia had special elections for Senate seats (2008 and 1992), turnout fell by over 40 percent, and Republicans’ net margins increased. That means Dems have to work extra hard, particularly in Blue-leaning strongholds, to boost turnout and overcome what appear to be systemic factors favoring the GOP.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to donate your money and time to have the biggest impact on helping Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win both of the Georgia Senate runoffs. Contents of this post:
Why the GA Senate runoffs are winnable
Where to donate
Where to volunteer
Let’s do this!
Why the GA Senate runoffs are winnable
First, let’s review how we got here. In both races, the lead candidate failed to hit the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff. Ossoff came within 100k votes of Perdue, out of 5 million votes (about 2%), with a libertarian candidate garnering 115k. And in the “jungle” special election, Warnock got the most votes (33%) of several candidates, but if you add up the Dem and GOP votes, Team Blue lagged by about 2% in that race as well.
So Dems begin with a deficit to make up — but also some advantages. Democrats in GA have a ton of enthusiasm and momentum off of Biden’s close and hard-fought win there, and an amazing and dedicated ground game that yielded tons of registrations and votes.
The truth is, no one really knows what will happen — which is why we consider both races to be jump balls. Despite the uncertainty and lack of historical precedent, we think Biden’s win in GA signals that the Dems’ organizing in GA over many years is powerful, in-place and ready for this moment.
Where to donate
Things are moving fast on the ground in GA with so little time before the runoffs. We’ve been doing a ton of reading and talking with folks about how to have an impact, and learned about many groups that are doing great work to mobilize GA voters, including the candidates themselves, community organizers, and Dem party groups. We think a lot of donors are already flocking to the individual campaigns and the GA Democrats — which is great! — so we are trying to highlight folks that are getting a bit less attention, esp. community organizers and county-based Dem groups. These organizations are doing great work with direct in-person, phone, text, and mail outreach to GOTV, and we think your donation will be super-impactful to them.
As usual, we’ve set up a one-click ActBlue link to make it easy for you to donate — but please also read below, because many high-impact groups that aren’t on ActBlue are worthy of an extra click to give to them specifically.
(1) Organizers: Several on-the-ground organizers are getting well-deserved credit for delivering GA to Biden, and they can probably help deliver the two Senate races as well. Here are the main ones that have come up repeatedly in our research:
Fair Fight — Stacey Abrams’ main outfit is focused on combatting voter suppression. Background here and here.
Mijente — This Latinx social justice organization is extremely active with voter outreach and mobilization in GA. Background here and here.
New Georgia Project — NGP (another Abrams brainchild) concentrates on voter registration, esp. among young people of color. Background here and here.
We’ve also heard of several other groups that aren’t on ActBlue, but are doing excellent work toward the Senate runoffs — please consider donating to them directly via their websites:
Finally, They See Blue, a South Asian group in GA, has compiled a fabulous list of many other BIPOC-led groups in the state working on voter mobilization and turnout — check it out!
(2) Local Dems: Local Dem party groups have been very active in registration and turnout efforts, and are continuing that great work for the runoffs. Party groups in the major Dem strongholds of Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties around Atlanta are all on our ActBlue slate.
Two quick notes about our ActBlue slate:
We’ve excluded the Ossoff and Warnock campaigns, as well as the GA Democrats, from our ActBlue slate, in order to focus on lesser-known effective organizations. But these are still great choices! Just make sure you understand the contribution rules for the campaigns; see our note at the end of this post.
As noted above, many great groups use other donation processors — so please consider supporting them as well. See the links above to groups that aren’t on ActBlue.
Where to volunteer
Organizations are already standing up phone-banks and postcard mailing efforts for the runoffs, and we assume text-banking will get going soon as well. (For more on why these efforts are so vital, see our earlier post.) We’ve listed below the organizations we’ve found so far, and will update as more things come to our attention — so watch this space!
Phone banking:
Postcards:
Vote Forward (sign up to get updates when they mobilize for GA)
Let’s do this!
We know that we’re all thrilled by Biden’s victory, anxious about the transition, and all exhausted from the work and emotional energy of the past several months. But we need to dig deep and win these two Senate races if we want Dems to have a chance at enacting major positive changes in the next two years. These two Senate runoffs are totally winnable by Team Blue, and our dollars and time can help make the difference. Let’s get cracking for the Blue Wave!
Addendum / note: If you donated to Ossoff and/or Warnock in the general election, you should know that this is a “new election” by FEC standards. That means that regardless of how much you gave in the general, you can donate up the maximum ($2,800 per individual) to each candidate.
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