Why these voters, and why now
Georgia has 1,109,280 voters who are in play in both of its statewide races and who live far enough from the nearest hospital that getting care is a local issue. They're close to half of all 2,266,974 Georgia voters in play in both races.
These voters come from one PharosGraph audience, Rural Hospital and Healthcare Access Community Impact. It holds every voter in a community far enough from the nearest hospital that getting care is a local issue. In Georgia that's 3,108,892 voters, 44 percent of the state against 30 percent of voters nationwide, and only Texas, Florida, California and North Carolina have more. The audience's name says rural, but these voters aren't confined to the countryside. Gwinnett County and Cobb County, in Atlanta's suburbs, hold the most of them, 244,896 and 210,747, about 42 percent of the voters in each county. In 50 of Georgia's 159 counties, at least nine voters in ten are in the audience.
Health care sits near the top of both races. It has ranked in the top five in PharosGraph's weekly read of the governor's race between Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson in all 14 weekly runs since early July, and second or third every week in the Senate race between Mike Collins and Jon Ossoff. It stood third in both on October 1. The Georgia Hospital Association counts 18 hospital closures in the state since 2013.
More than a third of the 3,108,892 voters in the audience, 36 percent, are in play in both races, against 32 percent of all Georgia voters. A voter is in play in a race when they're in at least one of its two Persuade audiences, which hold the voters PharosGraph ranks as most movable for each candidate. Another 556,164 voters in the audience are in play in one of the two races, and the remaining 1,443,448 are in neither. In play is a ranking of how open a voter is to persuasion. It doesn't say which way anyone will vote.
The 1,109,280 voters in play in both races turn out. In 2024, 77 percent of them voted, against 67.5 percent of all Georgia voters, so the work with them is persuasion more than turnout. Gwinnett County has the most of them, 97,359, followed by Cobb County with 92,991, Henry County with 47,373, Cherokee County with 44,037 and Hall County with 35,443. On health care itself, few of them hold a fixed position. PharosGraph places every voter in one of five position bands on the issue, and 91 percent of these 1,109,280 voters sit in the three middle bands. Each band is an audience of its own, so a campaign can match what it says about health care to where each voter stands.
Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson took questions from voters at a town hall on October 6, and Medicaid was among the subjects. The Atlanta Press Club's debate series reaches the governor's race on October 12 and the Senate race on October 13, the day early voting opens across Georgia. PharosGraph rescores every registered voter in the country each week and refreshes the audiences each month, so a campaign activating now gets this fall's voters and not a list built in the spring. The hospital access audience, the Persuade and GOTV audiences for both races and the five health care position bands are all available through L2, in LiveRamp and in L2 DataMapping. A campaign or group with a message on hospital access or the cost of care can put it in front of these voters before early voting begins.