In this brief, we estimate and compare how students eligible to vote in Georgia participated in the general election of 2020 and the runoff elections of 2021. Although the specific party-politics of the 2020 election stimulated high turnout nationally and intense attention from media and political organizers around Georgia, we took special interest in the runoff because it presented a moment to see how student voters would embrace this political moment. Would they understand and vote in what was nationally viewed as high-stakes races? Would students who voted in the general election return to vote on January 6, 2021, when they would not be on campus attending classes? Would students who grew up in Georgia but attended college and voted out of state re-register and vote in the run-off? To answer these and related questions, we constructed a dataset that allowed us to estimate and compare how students eligible to vote in Georgia participated in both November of 2020 and January of 2021. These were unique circumstances, but the questions are still relevant as we head into the runoff elections for one of the senate seats on December 6, 2022.
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- United States of America
