Stacey Abrams’s historic win

By J.E.F. | WASHINGTON, DC

THIS WEEK, Stacey Abrams became the first African-American woman ever to win a major-party nomination for governor when she beat Stacey Evans in Georgia’s primary. Ms Abrams is a (Bill) Clintonian figure: deeply versed in policy, fizzingly intelligent, ambitious and a superb retail politician. As minority leader in Georgia’s Republican-dominated House, she has worked effectively across the aisle. And she has a compelling personal story: raised in a family of modest means in Gulfport, Mississippi, she graduated from Spelman College and Yale Law School, became Atlanta’s deputy city attorney before she was 30-years-old and has been a legislator since 2007 (she has also written several romance novels under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery).

The primary tested two competing theories of the electorate. Ms Evans, who is white and was raised in rural Georgia, believed she could attract more support in the general election from disaffected Republicans and conservative Democrats. Ms Abrams built the same coalition that carried Barack Obama to victory: progressive whites, young people and as its foundation, black voters, who comprise 47% of Georgia’s population, and 40% of its eligible voters.

This strategy propelled Ralph Northam and Doug Jones to victory in Virginia and Alabama. It recognizes that there appears to be a ceiling on how many white votes a Democrat can attract, particularly in conservative states such as Georgia and Alabama. A campaign gets a better return spending its time and money turning out reliably Democratic voters than trying to persuade a small sliver of white voters who may not be all that persuadable—particularly if the cost of doing so is keeping quiet about topics such as racial justice, gun control, gay rights and criminal-justice reform, which motivate the base.

And the base is certainly enthusiastic about Ms Abrams: on May 22nd Democrats comprised 47.6% of all primary voters, up from an average of 35.4% in the last two mid-terms. Since 2010, according to Jason Carter, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2014, the average Democratic candidate outperforms Democrats’ primary vote share by 9.6%.

That seems optimistic. In 2014 Nathan Deal, the Republican candidate for governor, took 52.8% of the vote, and in 2016 Donald Trump won 51.1%; however enthusiastic Ms Abrams’s voters, there are probably not enough of them to comprise 57.2% of the electorate.

But Ms Abrams has two reasons to be (cautiously) optimistic. First, the Democratic primary, which could have been racially divisive, was in fact quite civil. That is partly because the candidates’ argument was tactical rather than substantive; on policy little separated the two. Ms Evans attracted plenty of elite African-American support, including the current and two former mayors of Atlanta. Across the country, Democratic primaries have been striking for their lack of rancour; the bitterness with which supporters of Bernie Sanders greeted Hillary Clinton’s primary win is all but absent.

And second, the Republican nomination is headed for a nasty run-off. Casey Cagle, the lieutenant-governor, amassed a huge war chest but failed to secure a majority of the vote. He will face Brian Kemp, the secretary of state, who boasted in a campaign ad that he would round up “criminal illegals” in his own pickup truck; and who on election night called Mr Cagle “a puppet…fighting for those with deep pockets whose interests are not ours”.

Having built a viable coalition on the left, Ms Abrams is savvy enough to now tack to the centre—which the Republican run-off will probably leave wide open. From there she follows the playbook laid out by Mr Jones in Alabama: shore up her base—and continue her registration drives—while also appealing to suburban moderates and hoping for depressed Republican turnout. She is still an underdog: Georgia last elected a Democratic governor in 1998. But she has a better shot and strategy than any since then.