Share and Follow
According to state data that was updated just before 1 a.m. on Monday, there have been 181,711 votes cast so far through the weekend.
ATLANTA — Georgians went to the polls in big numbers over the weekend, as early voting kicked off in the Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker – with Black voters and the youth vote coming in particularly strong.
According to state data that was updated just before 1 a.m. on Monday, there have been 181,711 votes cast so far through the weekend, with the vast majority of those (more than 166,000) cast in person.
RELATED: Saturday early voting draws big crowds in Georgia ahead of runoff election
Among those votes, the youngest demographic – those aged 18-24 – accounted for some of the largest turnout.
More than 18,000 voters in that age range went to the polls, about 10% of all the early votes so far. That’s a strong uptick from their proportion of votes in the Nov. 8 election – which was about 6%.
The largest age group was 55-60, with 12.6% of the weekend’s turnout – slightly up from their rate in November of 10.4%. In the general election, 60-65 had the most votes, and they were second-most over the weekend.
Read Related Also: Elon Musk gives ultimatum to remaining Twitter staff in email: Go ‘hardcore’ or leave
Black voters were by far the largest racial demographic group – with 84,218 votes constituting about half (46.3%) of all turnout. In November, Black voters made up 26.2% of the turnout.
White voters were 37.9% of the turnout over the weekend, according to state data, compared with 59.5% in November.
The weekend total of 181,711 represents just a fraction (about 4.6%) of the vote total in the Nov. 8 general election (more than 3.9 million total votes). In the 2021 runoffs, the “return rate” between general election and runoff votes was 92.7% in the race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue, and 91.3% in the race between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler.
If this year’s return rate were to approach those levels, that would mean in the range of 3.5 million Georgians can still be expected to cast a ballot either in early voting or on Dec. 6, the day of the runoff.
Early in-person voting will continue to be conducted throughout this week, ending on Friday. According to state data, only about 7% of absentee mail-in ballots that were issued have been submitted so far (15,402 out of 220,333).
