Democrats Pin Their Midterm Hopes on Registering New Voters

Five years ago, when Stacey Abrams was Democratic minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, she created an organization called the New Georgia Project with an eye on a beguiling set of figures. The first was 1.5 million, the number of people who’d moved to the state since 2005. The second was 20 percent, the proportion of those migrants who were white. And the third: 700,000, the estimate of how many minority Georgians weren’t registered to vote.

Now Abrams is trying to become the first black woman governor in U.S. history. Her chances will depend in large part on how those numbers manifest themselves on Nov. 6. Abrams has been preaching the demographics-as-Democratic-destiny doctrine for years. She’s spearheaded minority voter registration drives in Georgia and become an advocate for expanding voter rolls and ballot access nationwide in a way that would bolster her party.