Where do we go from Georgia?

Yesterday’s election in Georgia inevitably left us feeling disappointed. This was not the outcome we were hoping for, and it feels like a setback for our movement to flip seats, states, and eventually Congress and the Presidency.

Let’s not despair. Let’s first take stock of what we accomplished. In this race and many others, we’ve been closing Republican margins of defeat. We’ve been forcing the GOP to spend across the board on races they thought they could win easily. Democratic turnout has soared to unprecedented levels. And we’ve run better and better campaigns. Jon Ossoff recruited an incredible, professional staff that both brought national attention to this important race and mobilized members of the community.

Your efforts helped. Our community raised $168,000 for Jon and recruited over a thousand volunteers to make phone calls and knock on doors in Georgia. We jumped in early, when financial and volunteer support mattered most to make Jon a viable candidate. When he won the run-off and came within spitting distance of the 50% he needed to win the general, we were there, cheering him on.

Incredible partnerships emerged. Community organizations worked alongside national organizations (including Swing Left, Indivisible, and Spread the Vote) to help people get IDs, register voters, and get out the vote. As a result, the district saw turnout at 80% that of the 2016 Congressional race — an impressive feat for a special election.

Let’s talk about what we can learn from our experience in Georgia. To address the big elephant in the room: was the spending worth it?

All in all, the race cost $59M in direct candidate and independent Super PAC funding. This was the most expensive race in the history of the House. Ossoff received funding primarily from a grassroots donor base: over 200,000 small-dollar donors made up two-thirds of his campaign budget of $24M. Karen Handel, on the other hand, raised one-third of her campaign budget from small-dollar donors but outraised Ossoff 2.5-to-1 in independent expenditures from outside groups.

Our country’s investment in Jon’s race was a big bet. We took our resources and pooled them into the race we were most likely to win. By contrast, Democrats spent only $763,000 to back Archie Parnell, who narrowly lost a bid for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District last night. Turnout in SC-5 (a similarly-sized district to GA-06) was a mere 88,000, as compared to 260,000 in GA-06. Given the result, how should we think about our funding strategy?

We still believe that targeting matters. We chose to focus on GA-06 because it was the most “flippable” Congressional race we identified. That said, spending matters too — and Republican counterplay can influence our priority targets. Conceivably, diverting a portion of Ossoff’s budget to Parnell might have given Democrats an edge in a low-turnout race where the marginal dollar spent would have a greater impact. Given diminishing marginal returns, additional funding for Ossoff was unlikely to have a significant impact on turnout (one of the reasons we de-emphasized fundraising for this race after the first round in April).

In the next iterations of our flippability model, we will incorporate elements of game theory and campaign finance to understand where your dollars and support will go the furthest — not just for an individual candidate, but in a more comprehensive political system where different elections interact with each other.

Another theory to explore focuses on diversification of risk. Given the level of risk associated with each election, it may be more prudent to diversify our resources across different races. As we collect more data correlating funding and turnout/persuasion, we can better anticipate what insufficient, sufficient, and excessive funding levels look for each race.

Finally, though we’re proud of our role supporting Jon financially, we share the concern many have about American politics becoming an arms race between the parties. The problem is that it has always been an arms race — one we’ve been losing. Republicans have massively outspent Democrats in down-ballot races, both at the federal level and in state races (Flippable’s focus).

This year, we’ve started to turn the corner. We’re learning that money helps — we’re closing margins and turning out as we’ve never done before — but it also has its limits. Only when we address the barriers to our democracy will we see substantial, sustainable progressive wins in the House, Senate, and Presidency.

So what are these barriers?

Gerrymandering: A recent report by the Brennan Center, Extreme Maps, finds that “partisan bias resulting largely from the worst gerrymandering abuses in just a few battleground states provides Republicans a durable advantage of 16–17 seats in the current Congress, representing a significant portion of the 24 seats Democrats would need to gain control of the House in 2020.” Gerrymandering in Georgia was found, with statistical significance, to give Republicans an extra seat in Congress.

Voter suppression: As Ari Berman reported in The Nation on Monday, Karen Handel used her position as Georgia’s Secretary of State to enforce strict voter ID policies that disproportionately affect youth and people of color; purge thousands of eligible voters from the voter rolls; and remove Democratic candidates from the ballot based on spurious challenges to their residency. Handel’s actions are far from unusual. Particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, voter suppression remains a key Civil Rights issue hampering our democracy. Without comprehensive federal provisions, states must step up to the plate to empower voters.

What’s next?

Everything starts in the states. From reproductive rights to gun safety, from criminal justice reform to LGBTQ rights, all of our most urgent issues play out at the state level first. State legislators even decide the terms of our democracy, by drawing our district lines and choosing our voting laws.

The GOP has used analytics, voter suppression tactics, and huge infusions of funding to win big majorities in the states. It’s time for progressives to fight back. Let’s start by flipping Virginia.

All 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates are up this year, and we have a strong, diverse slate of Democrats running across the state. We need to flip 17 seats — and we have a plan to do it. Learn why it’s so important to flip VA blue, no matter where you live. Then chip in however you can.