Georgia: Battleground

I have been really busy recently and haven’t had time to blog. Volunteering for the Obama campaign has been fun but also kept me busy. We had phonebanking events every day last week with one at our home on Friday. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we went door to door contacting voters in South Atlanta to go out and vote on Tuesday. That’s also what we are doing today.

So how did Georgia become competitive? In 2000, Bush won Georgia 55%-43% and in 2004 increased the margin to 58%-41%. But in 2008, you can see for yourself:

Georgia is now a battleground state. McCain is leading Obama by only 1.7% here according to Pollster which “averages” all polls. Also, the betting market Intrade has Obama winning Georgia at 27.5%.

In addition, in 2004 African Americans were 27.2% of registered voters and contributed 25.4% of the votes. According to the latest voter registration statistics, African Americans are now 29.9% of registered voters.

In early voting since September 22, we have had 2,020,839 voters already cast their votes, which is 61.5% of the total number of votes cast (3,285,140) in 2004. Assuming a turnout of 80% (higher than 77% in 2004), this would mean that 43.9% have already voted. Among these early voters, African Americans comprised 34.9% of the total. We are hoping that African American turnout remains high even on Election Day tomorrow and puts Barack Obama over the top in Georgia.