The Biggest Winner of the Georgia-Alabama Game, Voting Trends & Hurricane Helene’s Damage – Top 3 Takeaways – September 30th, 2024
- And the winner of the Georgia-Alabama game was... Donald Trump. In what was a historic first half deficit by Georgia, briefly overcome with a historic second half comeback, only to have Alabama seal the deal in the end – the drama on the field was only outdone by one thing. The in-game announcement of Donald Trump’s attendance. There wasn’t a more thunderous response to anything that took place on the field during the high stakes SEC game featuring two top five teams going into the game. Tuscaloosa without a doubt played host the most raucous, and shortest, Trump rally to date. The reception was so notable that even the AP’s story summarizing the game’s results noted: Former President Donald Trump, the current Republican candidate, was on hand for the game. Trump was introduced early in the second quarter, drawing chants of “USA! USA!” and waving to the crowd from a luxury box. Now on the one hand, Donald Trump being received well in Alabama is a given. On the other hand, having nearly unanimous and overwhelming support from over 100,000 people anywhere is pretty impressive. Especially when many of those people are college students. The one uniting force between the Alabama and Georgia faithful was Donald Trump. And about warm receptions...on Friday I in my takeaways I mentioned this: <<The first potential trend for the 2024 General Election may be starting to set in. Voting is up in Virginia. The first potential swing state to offer in-person early voting, in addition to vote-by-mail ballots, was Virginia. And the early returns suggest Virginians are motivated. Overall voting in the generally blue state won by Joe Biden by ten points four years ago, but then flipped by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin three years ago, is voting early at higher rates than they’ve ever voted early before. So, what’s driving the record early voting in what has the potential to be a bellwether state? According to Virginia Tech Political Science Professor Karen Hult: Increased interest and increased involvement by Republicans in early voting.
- The early voting trends in Virginia are especially encouraging for Trump and Republicans. Donald Trump doesn’t have to win Virginia to become President of the United States, but if he’s even particularly competitive in Virginia, it's almost a certainty that he’ll be the next president of the United States.>> In citing three reasons why there was room for optimism with team Trump and his supporters was this: 3) Lower voter turnout among Democrats. (Of the three) That’s the one that could play up the biggest is lower voter turnout among Democrats over four years ago. Speaking of turnout... Over the weekend we received this related report from Newsweek that elaborates on those observations. In the story headlined: Is Virginia More Competitive for Trump Than It Looks? ... It states this: Could Donald Trump do the unthinkable and flip Virginia? Some Republicans are growing cautiously optimistic about their chances of taking the swing-turned-blueish state in November, following the first week of early voting in the commonwealth — even if those same Republicans would acknowledge that it remains an outside chance. In the first week of early voting, Virginians living in rural, Republican-leaning counties cast far more ballots than they did in the first week of early voting in 2020. At the same time, those living in Democratic counties cast fewer ballots than they did in the first week of early voting four years ago. Reading too much into that early data is tricky. Virginia doesn't have party registration, so there's no way of knowing whether these ballots were cast by Democrats or Republicans. Furthermore, early trends aren't set in stone. But it does suggest that Virginia Republicans are enthusiastic about casting their votes for the former president. So, the bottom line is that the enthusiasm for Trump over the past week wasn’t contained to Tuscaloosa. In a state not considered to be competitive heading into this cycle, it’s clearly shaping up to be interesting if not potentially competitive. In 2016 Trump lost Virginia by 5.4%. The RealClear Politics average of polls has Harris up only 4.8% currently. In 2020 Biden was shown with a 9.4% advantage in the state. In 2016 Clinton was shown with a 5.4% advantage in the state. What this indicates is that in the era of Trump, the RCP polling average in Virginia has been very accurate – performing within one percent of the actual results in both cycles. Trump is currently performing better than he was in either of the prior two cycles in that state. If you’re wondering why I’ve spent so much time breaking down Virgina’s early math...it’s due to this. It’s the first potentially competitive state that has early voting data (both in person and mailed in ballots) and we’re able to compare the voting trends in the state to the prior elections along with what the polls said in the state. Both votes are actual polls in addition to the political polls show Trump performing better than he ever has within the state. That’s interesting.
- A new $100 billion hurricane. To date there have been four hurricanes to top $100 billion in inflation adjusted damage. Katrina, Harvey, Ian and Maria. There’s a new one to hit the list. Helene... and almost all of those losses are outside of Florida where it made landfall. Low end estimates in Florida are for $2 billion in losses. High end estimates are for $7 billion a small fraction of what happened outside of our state. The losses and devastation are real for Floridians near the point of impact. By far the biggest issue, as so often is the case, is water. There’s no doubt you’ve heard and seen of pictures of the utter devastation in Ashville, North Carolina caused by the French Broad River flooding. Devastation that’s been described by local officials as “biblical”. In 1916 there was what had been known as a historic flood in the western North Carolina mountains. Estimates place the flooding associated with Helene in the North Carolina mountains at approximately 2 feet worse than that event. Those mountains have been like a second home to me throughout my life. And literally are a second home for Ashley and me as we have a home up there. As of now, we still have no idea how it fared. It may be quite some time before we do, but that’s actually the least of our concerns. There’s no cell service, no power and most notably no passable roads in many of these communities. The only way off some of the mountains is through the air. Emergency crews have been flying in – including Florida National Guard and related resources as part of Florida’s Operation Blue Ridge initiative to rescue and assist with the needs of the many Floridians in the Western North Carolina mountains. The one official report I’ve received from our community referred to the damage as catastrophic. The death toll has reached 95 people with approximately 600 more unaccounted for. Pray for the people who are still in harm's way. There are many. A major hurricane struck Florida destroying Cedar Key. Yet, remarkably, it proved to do over 90% of its damage elsewhere. As we often discuss with hurricanes, including last week in covering Helene, water so often is the biggest threat in a hurricane. That’s proved true once again.