Drop-boxes will have cost President Donald Trump the election if Biden wins Georgia, and this points to the state’s most important concern for the upcoming Senate runoffs, Pollster John McLaughlin said in an exclusive statement to The Georgia Star News.
McLaughlin is CEO and partner of national survey research and strategic services company McLaughlin & Associates.
The Star News ran a story Saturday, available here, citing a poll McLaughlin conducted. His company called 800 likely voters at the end of last month. The methodology was described as a random selection “to correlate with actual voter turnout in the November 3 general election.”
A majority of likely voters in January’s runoff election want Governor Brian Kemp to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly for absentee ballot signature verification. McLaughlin exclusively shared the poll results with The Star News, revealing that the bipartisan voters strongly desire a special legislative session addressing signature verification for every mail-in ballot.
So far, Kemp has refused to call a special legislative session before January 5.
McLaughlin is also pointing to the state legislature’s need to address drop boxes.
In a followup, McLaughlin provided this exclusive quote to The Star News:
Your reports about the lack of ballot security and potential for fraud due to the drop boxes in Georgia clearly point to the single most important reason for Republicans’ concern in the upcoming senate runoff.
Since the Georgia Secretary of State cannot report how many ballots actually arrived from the US mail vs drop boxes, the results of our poll are the best indicator of the impact of the drop boxes on the Georgia election and it is clear that drop boxes delivered Joe Biden’s current recount margin.
According to our recent Georgia poll, among the 5 million voters, only 20% of the voters voted in person on Election Day. President Trump won among those voters 68% to 30%.
These Election Day voters were very important to the President’s success in Georgia and applying these percentages to the reported vote, they would have given the President a 380 thousand vote advantage over Biden.
However the majority of voters, 54%, claim they voted early in person before election day. According to our poll Joe Biden won narrowly among these voters 52% to 47%. Again applying these percentages to the reported vote, Biden would have netted about 127 thousand votes and reduced the President’s lead.
The remaining voters, 26% of the total, voted by mail or drop box. 14% told us they voted by US mail. Those who voted US mail voter for President Trump 50% to 49%. This would have added another almost 6 thousand votes to President Trump’s margin.
Those who voted via the Zuckerberg paid drop boxes told us that they voted for Biden 73% to 27%. Among the roughly 5 million votes, according to our poll about 595 thousand votes would have come in via drop box. According to the poll, Biden would have gotten 432 thousand drop box votes and President Trump 159 thousand. Therefore, Biden won the drop box vote by 273 thousand votes. If Biden wins Georgia the fraud prone, unaccountable drop boxes cost President Trump and the Republicans the election. The legislature needs to fix this ASAP before the January 5 runoff.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
Photo “Mail in Ballots” by Cindy Shebley. CC BY 2.0.
