Special election

Georgia voters see presidential-level stakes in special election

More than half of voters said the special election is more important than typical campaigns.

By JAKE LAHUT

The hotly contested House race between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff is attracting presidential-level interest in Georgia.

Ninety-two percent of voters in the recent Atlanta Journal Constitution poll said that they are following the House race closely, including 64 percent who said they were watching the special election “very closely” ahead of the June 20 vote. And 52 percent of voters in the district said they thought the race was more important than past elections, with another 45 percent saying the special election was equally important.

The level of interest far exceeds what is typical for House races. Even at peak levels of interest in 2010, the Pew Research Center found that only 30 percent of voters were following that year’s midterm elections closely. Other hotly contested midterm elections in 2006 and 2014 barely garnered 20 percent of people who said they were following the election closely, according to Pew.

Voter interest in Georgia looks more like the levels of interest in the middle of the 2016 presidential race: a Heartland Monitor poll from last July showed that 63 percent of Americans thought the 2016 presidential election was more important than past elections.

The unusual intensity of the race between Ossoff and Handel is likely helping keep voters hanging on every word. The campaigns and outside groups have spent over $40 million on the race, flooding homes in the district with countless TV ads — one local station has added extra news programming to make room for more ads — and mailers, as well as phone calls and visits from canvassers going door to door for votes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution poll also showed that more than half of all voters in Georgia’s 6th District have been personally contacted by Ossoff's campaign alone, while about a quarter of voters said they had been personally contacted by the Handel campaign.

The heavy spending and personal attention from the campaigns already contributed to unusually high turnout in the first round of the special election, the April 18 all-party primary. Over 190,000 people voted in that contest, which sent Ossoff and Handel to the runoff — 20,000 more than turned out for the 2016 presidential primaries and just shy of turnout in recent midterm elections.

Turnout is expected to increase on June 20, with over three times as many early votes having been cast for the runoff than the primary and thousands of people who did not vote in round one already casting early ballots for the runoff.

While interest in the special election is high across the district, Democrats perceive the highest stakes. Sixty percent of voters who said they supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 said this election was more important than past ones, while 49 percent of those who cast ballots for President Donald Trump last year said the same.