A more diverse Georgia heads to the polls. Will turnout keep up?

What November could look like

The rolls alone are changing the electorate. If every group votes at the rate it did in the 2022 midterm, with active and inactive registrants counted separately, November’s voters would be less white than 2022’s, with Black, Hispanic and Asian voters each making up a larger share, because of who has registered since. They would also be older.

At 2022 rates, with active and inactive registrants counted separately, the white share of voters would fall 1.9 points, to 58.6%. The Black share would rise 0.8 points, to 28.0%, and Hispanic and Asian voters together would gain about a point. About 4.3 million people would vote, roughly 300,000 more than in 2022. One caution: Georgia’s 2022 voter list was taken in December, four weeks after that election, when some inactive voters who had cast ballots were already back on the active list. That can make the modeled total run somewhat high.

The age shift runs the other way. Voters 65 and older would rise from 28.4% of the electorate to 30.4%, and voters under 35 would slip from 17.1% to 16.9%. Older Georgians are a growing share of the rolls and vote at the highest rates, counting all registered voters, active and inactive, so the electorate gets younger only if young voters turn out at higher rates than they did in 2022.

At 2024 presidential turnout rates, with active and inactive registrants counted separately, the changes point the same way but are smaller: the white share would fall 1.1 points and the Black share would rise 0.4.

Turnout itself can move the numbers much further. At 2018 rates, which count all registered voters, active and inactive, because status is not available for that year, and when the white–Black voter turnout gap was smallest, the Black share of voters would reach 29.9%, close to its 31% share of the rolls. Actual turnout will depend on the races on the ballot and on the campaigns, which voter records cannot measure.

This midterm is not a rerun of 2022. Both came with an unpopular president: in September 2022, 37% of Georgia voters approved of Joe Biden’s job performance in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, and polling averages this month put Donald Trump’s national approval between 37% and 40% (Poliwave, Pollsmax). But the White House has changed parties, and in most midterms the president’s party loses ground. The ballot is different, too. In 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp won a rematch with Stacey Abrams, and the U.S. Senate race went to a December runoff. This year the governor’s office is open, with Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms facing Republican Rick Jackson, and Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff faces Republican Rep. Mike Collins. None of that is in the model, which holds 2022 turnout rates fixed, with active and inactive registrants counted separately.

Who can vote in November

The rolls heading into this election are the most diverse in at least eight years. Hispanic registrations grew from about 178,000 in March 2018 to 430,000 as of Oct. 8. Asian and Pacific Islander registrations rose from 132,000 to 275,000. Both groups grew far faster than the rolls overall, which expanded by about a quarter.

White voters remain the largest group, but their share slipped from 54% to 50%. The Black share held near 30%.

The rolls are also getting older. One in five registered voters was 65 or older in 2018. Today the share is 22%.

The total peaked at about 8.24 million just before the 2024 election. It fell to 8.01 million a year later, after nearly 600,000 records came off the rolls, then climbed again ahead of this year’s elections.

Race comes from what voters report when they register. People who chose “other,” chose American Indian or Alaska Native, or left the question blank are grouped together in these charts because the state changed how it labels those answers during this period. The next section looks at how often listed race changes.

How the rolls record race

Nearly one in eight Georgians who were registered in both March 2018 and October 2026 is listed under a different race today. Of about 5 million voters on both lists, about 602,000 changed category. They are the same people, with the same names and birth years, and the changes are in the state’s own voter files.

Most changes filled in a race for records that had none. About 171,000 voters listed as “unknown” in 2018 are now listed as white, and about 103,000 as Black. But listings also moved the other way: about 87,000 voters listed as Black in 2018, and about 87,000 listed as white, are now listed as “other.”

The single biggest shift was a relabeling. Between the December 2022 and October 2024 lists, nearly 600,000 records went from “unknown” to “other,” in the same period the state’s files switched from abbreviated race codes to spelled-out names. This report combines “unknown,” “other” and American Indian or Alaska Native into one category, so that relabeling does not show up in the counts above. The pace has slowed. Between the 2018 and 2020 lists, about 2.5% of voters a year changed category. Since late 2024, it has been about 1.5% a year.

Race is an optional question on Georgia’s voter registration application, so a listing can change when someone fills out a new form or updates a registration. These records cannot show why any one listing changed.

The changes add up. Among voters registered in both years, relabeling added about 73,000 to the white count and about 33,000 to the Black, Hispanic and Asian counts combined, while the “other or not recorded” group lost about 106,000. Set those aside, and Black, Hispanic and Asian Georgians still account for most of the growth in the rolls since 2018: about 58%, rather than 60%. The November model in this report classifies every voter by the race on their most recent record.

Who usually shows up

Recent November electorates have been whiter and older than the rolls, and the difference has grown. In 2018, white voters’ share of the November electorate was 5.3 points higher than their share of registrants. By 2024 the gap was 6.3 points. Black voters went the other way, from 1.0 points under their share of the rolls to 3.5 points under.

Hispanic and Asian voters make up a growing slice of the November electorate, though still smaller than their share of the rolls.

Younger voters turn out for presidential races. Voters under 35 were nearly a quarter of the 2020 and 2024 November electorates but only 17% in the 2022 midterm, the most recent election like this one.

Primaries skew older still. Voters 65 and up cast 40% of the ballots in the May 2026 primary, nearly twice their share of registered voters.

Women have turned out at higher rates than men in every election since 2018, counting all registered voters, active and inactive. They are 53% of registered voters and about 56% of November voters.

The turnout gap to watch

Measured among all registered voters, active and inactive, the white–Black voter turnout gap has widened in each November election since 2020, from 12.5 points that year to 13.3 points in the 2022 midterm and 15.4 points in 2024. Unless noted, turnout in this report means the share of each group’s registered voters, active and inactive, who cast a ballot. These rates run lower than Georgia’s official turnout figures, which count active voters only.

Counting only active voters, the gap also widened, from 13.5 points in 2020 to 15.8 points in 2024. It also matches an outside estimate: the Brennan Center for Justice, working from census population figures rather than voter lists, found the gap grew by about three points from 2020 to 2024.

The 2018 midterm gap was about 7.6 points, counting all registered voters. That figure is less certain because no registration list was taken near that election, and active and inactive status is not available for it.

Primaries point the other way this year. Among all registered voters, the gap in the May 2026 primary was about 1.0 point, the narrowest of any election in this period, though primary gaps swing with the races on each party’s ballot.

Age divides turnout even more than race. In the 2022 midterm, voters 65 and older turned out at 71%. Voters under 35 turned out at 28%. Both rates count active and inactive registrants.

Inside the numbers

The drop in Black voter turnout between 2020 and 2024 was concentrated among middle-aged men. These rates count all registered voters, active and inactive. Turnout among Black male voters 35 to 54 fell from 56% to 48%. Black female voters the same age fell from 69% to 64%.

Counting all registered voters, active and inactive, no group of white voters, sorted by age and gender, moved more than 2 points. Turnout among Asian and Hispanic voters slipped a few points in nearly every group.

The last midterm was hardest on young female voters of color. Counting all registered voters, active and inactive, turnout among Black female voters under 35 fell from 42% in 2018 to 28% in 2022, and among Hispanic female voters under 35 from 40% to 23%.

In the May 2026 primary, Black female voters 55 to 64 turned out at a higher rate than white female voters the same age, counting all registered voters, active and inactive.

Who keeps coming back

Midterm voters are mostly repeat voters. Nine in 10 people who voted in the 2022 general had also voted in the 2020 general.

Presidential elections bring out a different crowd. Nearly a third of November 2024 voters had not voted in the 2022 general, either because they skipped it or because they weren’t yet registered.

Habitual voters dominate primaries. More than half of the people who voted in the May 2024 primary had voted in each of the four previous statewide elections.

Voters who show up every November but skip primaries made up about a quarter of the 2024 general electorate. Among registered voters with that record heading into the May 2026 primary, active and inactive, only about one in four cast a ballot.

Records from 2014 and the May 2016 primary aren’t available, so the detailed voting-record groups begin with the November 2020 election.

New voters since 2024

About 563,000 people have registered since the 2024 election. They are younger and more diverse than the voters already on the rolls: fewer than four in 10 are white, and nearly two-thirds are under 35.

Whether they vote is an open question. In the 2022 midterm, 35% of new registrants voted, compared with 52% of established voters, counting active and inactive registrants in both groups.

Each wave of new registrants has been more diverse than the last. White voters made up 45% of the people who registered in the two years before the 2020 election. One in 10 of the latest group is Hispanic, about twice the share among established voters.

New registrants are also split almost evenly between men and women. Established voters are 53% women.

Inactive voters

About 699,000 registrations are inactive heading into November, 8.5% of the rolls. Inactive voters can still cast a ballot, and voting makes them active again. In November 2024, about 67,000 of them did, roughly 1 in 15 inactive registrants.

Georgia marks a registration inactive when election mail comes back undeliverable or a voter has had no contact with election officials for several years. Nearly half of the registrations listed as inactive before the 2024 election were gone a year later. Of about 1 million inactive registrations on the October 2024 list, 485,000 were no longer on the rolls by November 2025. Among active voters, fewer than 2 in 100 dropped off.

Younger voters are the most likely to be inactive. On the current list, 10% of registrants under 35 are inactive, compared with 6% of those 65 and older. The rate is 8.8% for Black registrants and 7.2% for white registrants. Men are slightly more likely than women to be inactive.

The inactive list rises and falls with the state’s list cleanup. It more than doubled between October 2020 and October 2024, to about 1 million, then fell to its current level.

Around the state

Measured among all registered voters, active and inactive, the white–Black voter turnout gap grew between 2020 and 2024 in every one of Georgia’s 15 metro areas and in both groups of smaller counties. It was widest in Athens-Clarke County and Albany, where it topped 20 points, and narrowest in Hinesville.

Primaries tell a different story in several metros. Black voters’ share of primary ballots rose between 2018 and 2026 in metro Atlanta, Augusta and Columbus.

Hinesville, Dalton and Gainesville added registrations fastest, each growing by more than a third. Metro Atlanta accounted for more than half of the state’s growth.

Find any county in the table below to see how its rolls and turnout have changed heading into November.

What to watch on Nov. 3