Abrams has led an effort to register thousands of voters in Georgia since 2018.
Stacey Abrams, the founder of Fair Fight, said Sunday that Democrats are not concerned about only having a slight edge in polling, but feel a “great deal of urgency” around Georgia’s two runoff elections on Tuesday.
“We did very well in vote by mail, we did very well in early vote, but we know Election Day is going to be the likely high-turnout day for Republicans, so we need Democrats who haven’t cast their ballots to turn out,” Abrams told ABC’s “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
The outcome of the two races on the ballot — between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff and GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler the Rev. Raphael Warnock — will determine which party controls the Senate, prompting national attention.
More than 3 million Georgians have voted early.
And, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 76,000 people registered to vote between the deadline for November’s general election and the deadline for the runoffs. Abrams said they are “very certain” most of those are Democrats based on demographics.
“What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held,” she said. “We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”
Since losing in the 2018 gubernatorial election to Republicans Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Abrams launched Fair Fight to combat voter suppression and encourage voter turnout. During the 2020 general election, Fair Fight and The New Georgia project helped register hundreds of thousands of voters in the state.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will campaign in Savannah, Georgia, later Sunday. Both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden will visit the state Monday, with Biden campaigning in Atlanta and Trump headlining a rally in Dalton.
On Sunday, Raddatz brought up Biden outperforming Democratic Senate candidates during the general election, and asked Abrams if she thought that was because Biden’s win was more about dissatisfaction with Trump. Abrams attributed the difference to voter’s familiarity with Biden.
“Joe Biden’s been a part of American politics for 40 plus years. And so for a number of new voters they’re going to vote only when they’re confident,” she said. “That’s why we spent this time over the last nine weeks educating voters about Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.”
“They’ve crisscrossed the state and we believe we’ve closed that distance and that the voters that are turning out now absolutely know them and they’re standing by their sides and voting for them,” she added.
Abrams also said that recent moves from Republicans, like the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking $2,000 stimulus checks, are convincing Democratic voters of the importance of this election.
“The hypocritical idea that it’s okay to support business but not to support the business of government, the business of serving the people, has really galvanized voters. They feel the very real consequences of COVID-19 here in Georgia,” she said.
When Raddatz pressed Abrams on comparisons between her refusal to concede in 2018 and Trump’s rhetoric about the 2020 election, Abrams said it was like comparing “apples and bowling balls.”
“I pointed out that there were a series of actions taken that impeded the ability of voters to cast their ballots,” she said. “And in almost every one of those circumstances, the courts agreed, as did the state legislature.
“By contrast, President Trump has lost every single one of his challenges in the state of Georgia and he has no evidence,” Abrams added. “An audit — the fourth, I think, of this election found that there was zero fraud in our signature-match process. One person accidentally — or inadvertently signed for her husband against the rules, but otherwise we know that the signatures match and that the process works.”
