Personal contact key to turnout in tight Georgia races

DAWSON, Ga. — Someone like Erika Hardwick has come to the door of countless Georgia voters.

A paid canvasser for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, Hardwick was working the southwestern Georgia town of Dawson on a warm afternoon last month. She was trying to motivate people in the town 135 miles south of Atlanta to cast ballots on or before Tuesday.

Hardwick is part of an intensifying effort to contact voters in

Georgia, where narrow electoral margins have led political parties and other groups to pour in resources, knowing that driving a few more voters to the polls could make a difference.

Although campaigns spend millions on television and social media ads, research has found that face-to-face contact is more effective in pushing marginal voters to the polls. Democrats also expanded “relational organizing,” paying people to call or text their friends and acquaintances to urge them to vote.

Those efforts may be bearing fruit in Georgia’s big early voting turnout. More than 2 million people had cast early ballots by mail or in person by last week, far ahead of the turnout pace of 2018. New Georgia Project’s figures show people it has contacted face-to-face have been three times as likely to vote early so far this year compared with similar people who have had no contact.

The New Georgia Project has devoted itself to bringing voters to the polls who represent a rapidly diversifying Georgia — Black, Latino, Asian and younger voters. New Georgia Project and its associated action fund don’t endorse candidates but push progressive policies broadly in line with Democrats.

Hardwick’s list avoided surefire voters, instead seeking to contact what some might call infrequent voters. The New Georgia Project instead calls them “high opportunity voters.” The group says it has reached 1.9 million people so far.

Republicans also have intensified efforts after barely winning in 2018 and then losing the presidential race in 2020 and two U.S. Senate runoffs in 2021. The Republican National Committee has more than 85 staffers working turnout operations in

Georgia, spokesperson Garrison Douglas said, more than five times as many as in 2018. Republicans say they have had more than 4.5 million voter contacts, although some voters have been reached more than once.

“We have to work harder than we ever have before,” incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said of his campaign’s turnout push after a rally with former Vice President Mike Pence last week. “We lost, I think, the 2020 race because we didn’t have a good ground game in the state. And we have one now, but we’re not finished with that.”