To understand what is going on you need to read the numbers AND the context

From Democrats Fret as Stacey Abrams Struggles in Georgia Governor’s Race by Maya King and Reid J. Epstein.  The subheading is She has been trailing her Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp, alarming Democrats who have celebrated her as the master strategist behind the state’s Democratic shift.

The New York Times is not really reporting news but pulling hard for their candidate.  "She is beloved by Democratic voters" is a known and reportable fact?

I stumbled over the numbers being reported.  In one section of the column we have:

Georgia Democrats have grown increasingly pessimistic about Stacey Abrams’s chances of ousting Gov. Brian Kemp from office, pointing to her struggles to rally key parts of her party’s coalition and her inability to appeal to a slice of moderate Republican voters who can decide the state’s elections. 

 

Public and private polls have consistently shown her trailing Mr. Kemp, a Republican seeking a second term. And, in a particularly worrying sign for Ms. Abrams, polls also show she is drawing less support than the other high-profile Democrat on the ballot, Senator Raphael Warnock, who is seeking a first full term. 

 

The gap between the two Democrats, which is within the margin of error in some recent surveys and as wide as 10 points in others, highlights the extent of her struggles. Though she is beloved by Democratic voters, she has lost some ground with Black men, who provided crucial backing in her narrow loss to Mr. Kemp in 2018. And while Mr. Warnock draws some support from Republican moderates, Ms. Abrams — who has been vilified more by the G.O.P. than any other statewide figure — has shown little sign of peeling off significant numbers of disaffected Republicans.

In another we have:

A July poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found Ms. Abrams winning support from about 80 percent of Black voters in Georgia, a figure that is dangerously low in the narrowly divided state. Her campaign released an internal poll last week showing her support among Black men at 85 percent, a figure still short of her 2018 performance by about eight percentage points. That poll found her two points behind Mr. Kemp overall, a tighter margin than previous surveys.

What can we glean?

Black men are crucial to her election.

Based on an AJC July poll, Abrams is supported by 80% of black voters in Georgia.

Based on an August Abrams campaign poll, Abrams is supported by 85% of black male voters in Georgia.

In 2018, she had 93% support from black male voters.

The article is trying to make black male voters the weakness in her campaign strategy but the data the reporters present suggests otherwise.  Much hinges on the accuracy of the AJC poll in July.  If she is really only pulling 80% of the black vote, then that is the strategic weakness, but it is among black women not black men.

Black male support has declined from 93% in 2018 to 85% in 2022, but if overall black support is only 80%, then the deficit must be among black women assuming black men and women vote at the same rates.  If we go with the NYT's own data, then they are incorrect.  Her campaign weakness is with black women, not black men.  So why are they trying to make black men the fall guys?

My guess is that this a product of the well-established innumeracy of the New York Times.  I am guessing that the July 2022 AJC survey is this one which does reflect 80% of black voters supporting Abrams.  The 93% black male support in 2018 actually appears to have been black voting support based on this data.  

According to the latter source (exit polling) 88% of black men supported Abrams in 2018 as did 97% of black women.  If support from all blacks has collapsed to 80%, then it has declined by 8 percentage points among black men and by 17 percentage points among black women.  

That is quite a different story than what made its way into the news report.  Abrams' issue is not a collapse in black male support but more broadly a collapse in black support.  

The exit polling from 2018 probably points to the key issue for Abrams.  61% of HS education voters went with Kemp and only 38% went with Abrams.  At the other end of education attainment scale,  60% of those with an advanced degree went with Abrams and only 39% went with Kemp.

In terms of income, the very poorest went 65% for Abrams and 34% with Kemp.  Every other income level went 60% with Kemp and 40% with Abrams.

Finally, in terms of sex, Abrams took 56% of the female vote and Kemp took 58% of the male vote.  

It appears that her coalition is primarily black, poor, female and advanced degree holders.  Both an interesting coalition and, it would seem, kind of fragile.  If she is losing support among black voters then she will lose again.

For years, she worked to register and turn out Democratic voters, narrowly losing her first bid for governor in 2018 and helping fuel President Biden’s victory in 2020. Now, her struggles have some Georgia Democrats wondering if the Abrams model — seeking to expand the universe of voters to fit her politics — is truly better than trying to capture 50 percent of the voters who exist now.

This passage suggests a hard-nosed reality.  Abrams has been effective in running registration campaigns.  So effective that for the past few election cycles, the percentage of blacks registered to vote in Georgia has been higher than the percentage of whites.

But political victories are based on who shows up to vote rather than who is registered to vote.  

But an analysis of over­all voter turnout leaves some­thing else out too. Histor­ic­ally, even when over­all turnout has gone up, the gap between turnout by white voters and nonwhite voters has persisted. In fact, in recent years, that gap has grown in many parts of the coun­try.

Since Georgia already has an unusually high number of black voters registered and since blacks do not tend to vote at the same degree that they are registered, it would seem that hanging your campaign on getting more black voters registered might not be a successful one.  At the very least there is the prospect of declining returns to effort.  

But that strategy may be the only one Abrams has.

It is interesting to compare her to Warnock who a black man running for reelection to the US Senate.  While the chattering class wants to focus on male versus female, I think there is a much stronger and more subtle an issue at play than that.  

Warnock is running a considerably stronger campaign than Abrams and seems to be attracting more support from across the demographic spectrum than Abrams.  In his ads, he presents himself as a father, a minister, a man who cares about his whole community.  This appeals both to traditionalist blacks and even to religious and conservative whites.  Were he running as a Republican, I suspect he would be a shoo-in.

His strongest mark against him (other than the domestic violence claims) is that while he is an admirable individual, do you really want more of the Biden Agenda?  If you send Warnock back to Washington, D.C. to the Senate, you will get more of the Biden treatment.  

Only 35% of Georgians think that the Biden program is desirable.  They are faced with voting for an admirable black man, Warnock, who will enable more Biden Agenda.  I don't know how that will play.  

Warnock's Republican opponent is a University of Georgia football hero from years ago, Hershel Walker.  He is also black, so that factor is out of the contest.  He has a number of out of wedlock children as well.  The Warnock personae is much more appealing to the normal traditionalist middle class but hero on the football field has an enormous appeal in Georgia.  Since that is not in my wheelhouse, I don't know how to assess that appeal.  

I don't know who will win that Senate race, Warnock or Walker.  I find Warnock more appealing but would not abide sending anyone who would be a reliable supporter of the Biden agenda.  I am guessing that this race will be close but I suspect Georgia is more football mad than I would take into account and therefore it will go to Walker.

In the Abrams race though, I think that the New York Times and the Democratic operatives are correct.  She is in a more perilous position.  

She denied the 2018 election results, (a popular position among the Democratic chattering class then, but which is more problematic now when they want election denial to be more of a political death knell).  Abrams is a good speaker and a good story teller, as long as you don't examine the nature of stories with an empirical mind.  See Local knowledge contrasting with national journalistic campaigning from 2018.  

Stacey Abrams wants to be Governor of Georgia and wants to fund a massive number of social programs and yet, at mid-life of 44 years old, with no dependents, and the beneficiary of the best education our globally superior university system can provide, Abrams owes some $55,000 in back taxes, $100,000 in student loans, and $78,000 in credit card balances. That doesn't include car loan debt and mortgage debt on her three-story, very nice town-home.

Granted, many politicians are spendthrift or careless in their finances. But the contrast is still pretty strong in this instance. Here is a person with a degree from Yale Law school taking the position that she knows what people ought to pay more in taxes for, and yet does not manage her own finances well, makes poor life choices about her personal work income and investments, and, apparently, in contrast with most ordinary people, suffers no negative consequences for failure to pay taxes.

How likely is it that a tax increasing, grievance mongering, fancy Atlanta home-owning, tax-dodging, Yale law degree holding, left-wing, secular, debtor politician who can't pay her taxes or loans might actually win the election for Governor? It could happen. But it isn't, despite all the bubbly fluff by Molly Ball, highly likely. And it has nothing to do with race. There are plenty of other reasons not to vote for her.

To that indictment is now added that she got rich from losing her governor campaign in 2018.  From have a quarter of million dollars in unpaid taxes, student loans and credit card balances (not to mention the mortgage and car payments) in 2018, she is now worth northwards of $3 million in 2022.  I am keen for everyone to be more productive and to reap the benefits of their productivity.

But it is hard not to look at a politician becoming suddenly rich and not then raise an eyebrow.  I am reasonably confident that her finances are probably above board but your average voter would have no prospect of suddenly coming into $3 million dollars in three years.  That is hard to process.  

Does she really speak for the law abiding, rule following, poor?  

Who knows.  I think the race between Kemp and Abrams for Governor might be closer than in 2018.  Or not.  But I suspect she will still lose again.  We'll see.

And as for the Democrats, I really do think Georgia would be a state where they ought to be expanding their appeal (as Warnock is attempting to do) rather than increasing the registration rates.  

And for the New York Times - focus on the numbers.  There is a story in there, even if it is not the one you wan to tell.