Nearly 17,000 vote early in runoffs in Troup

Published 6:00 pm Monday, January 4, 2021

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Approximately 16,900 people have already voted in Georgia’s runoff election in Troup County, representing about 40 percent of registered voters.

County Elections and Registration Supervisor Andrew Harper said Monday that 12,104 people voted early in-person, which wrapped up last week.

The county has received approximately 4,800 absentee ballots as of last week, but more trickled in on Monday, he said.

Election day Tuesday, and polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

All precincts that were open in the November election are open and have not been changed.

Absentee ballots must be received by the county elections office by the time polls close in order to be counted.

If a voter has not already mailed in their absentee ballot, county drop boxes are located at the Troup County Government Center, the Hogansville Police Department and West Point City Hall.

The county has already begun the process of opening and scanning absentee ballots, though they will not be tabulated until election night.

Of the 12,104 in-person votes cast so far, 10,411 were cast at the government center and 1,693 were cast at the Hogansville Annex.

The runoff election includes two U.S. Senate races. Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are being challenged by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. A third race for Public Service Commission pits Republican incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald against Democrat Daniel Blackman.

The Senate races will determine control of the U.S. Senate, which currently sits at 48 Democrats and 50 Republicans. If Democrats win both seats, it will enable Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes on party-line issues.

In the November presidential election, 15,924 votes were cast early in-person, a little more than half of all votes. The early in-person turnout in Troup for the run-off is about 76 percent of the early in-person vote in the general election.

In November, 6,424 absentee-by-mail votes were cast in Troup. The current number of 4,800 is about 75 percent of the general election absentee turnout, though there is still time for absentees to come in.

According to georgiavotes.com, an unofficial data project that takes publicly available data from the Secretary of State’s office and organizes it, the racial breakdown of the early vote is 63.2 percent white, 30.8 percent Black, 0.8 percent is Hispanic, 0.7 Asian and 4.5 percent other.

The total general election vote in Troup was 65.1 percent white, 27.3 percent Black, 0.8 percent Hispanic, 0.8 percent Asian and 6 percent other.

The gender breakdown is so far similar to November. According to Georgia Votes, 56.5 percent of the early vote was female — in November, the female vote represented 56.8 percent of all votes.

Almost a quarter (24.6 percent) of general election voters in 2020 did not vote in 2016, according to the site. In the early runoff vote, that number is much smaller, at 3.9 percent.