Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Control of the U.S. Senate was on the line, but many Georgia Republicans – at least some deterred by Donald Trump’s loss – stayed home rather than cast ballots in January’s runoffs. Their absence at the polls helped swing Georgia and the Senate to the Democrats. Over 752,000 Georgia voters who cast ballots in the presidential election didn’t show up again for the runoffs just two months later, according to a new analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of recently released voting records. More than half of the no-shows were white, and many lived in rural areas, constituencies that lean toward Republican candidates. Trump’s message that the election was stolen discouraged voters such as Craig Roland, a 61-year-old Rome resident. Roland said he didn’t believe his vote would count. ‘What good would it have done to vote? They have votes that got changed,’ Roland said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever vote again.'”

“The AJC’s analysis found that the drop in turnout was most severe in northwest and South Georgia, areas where Trump held rallies, in Dalton and Valdosta, to bolster support for the state’s Republican senators. At those events, Trump both reinforced his criticism of Georgia’s elections, with unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, and urged voters to support the state’s Republican senators. ‘Repeated attacks on the election system muddied the waters for Republican voters and may have convinced some of his strongest supporters that Perdue and Loeffler weren’t doing enough to support his claims and weren’t worth turning out for,’ said Bernard Fraga, an Emory University political science professor who researched voting data.”