ATLANTA — Georgia's 2024 presidential primary election results are in, though they won't show you at first glance one of the more intriguing elements of the campaign.
Some Democratic voters sought to replicate the protest vote seen in places like Michigan, where "uncommitted" received about 13% of the vote. In Georgia, organizers of the protest vote campaign encouraged Democratic voters who disagree with the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war to submit a blank ballot since there is no "uncommitted" option.
The state's official results on the Secretary of State's Office website do not show a count for blank ballots, but you can tease out how the "Leave it Blank" campaign fared by downloading county-level data.
The summary reports available on the county results pages (right-hand side of the page) show how many "undervotes" there were in both the Republican and Democratic races. An "undervote" is noted when a voter selects fewer than the maximum number of candidates allowed in a race.
In this case, Democratic voters were allowed one choice among President Joe Biden, Marianne Williamson, and Dean Phillips on the primary ballot. An undervote would indicate no choice among those was made — i.e., a blank ballot was submitted.
So how many blank ballots were submitted?
The county-level data for the core five metro Atlanta counties revealed the following undervote totals:
- Fulton County: 1,735 undervotes out of 46,835 (official votes total + undervotes) (3.7%)
- DeKalb County: 1,445 undervotes out of 43,680 (3.3%)
- Gwinnett County: 663 undervotes out of 18,940 (3.5%)
- Cobb County: 631 undervotes out of 24,058 (2.6%)
- Clayton County: 61 undervotes out of 12,735 (0.5%)
As of Wednesday morning, the undervote total in these five counties was 4,535 out of 146,248 Democratic primary ballots — or about 3.1%.
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