After a seemingly endless campaign season, Election Day is finally upon us.
Georgia voters will go to the polls today to help America choose between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for president. Georgians will also be asked to vote on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would allow the state to create a commission that could approve charter schools in local communities, even if local school boards oppose them.
Many polls show Obama and Romney in a tight race, within the margin of error.
But the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, which dives into the methodology of polls, focuses more on the Electoral College votes, which actually determine who will become president. The blog’s author, Nate Silver, gives Obama a roughly 86 percent chance of winning enough electoral votes to remain in office.
(Silver also rates Georgia as 99.9 percent likely to go for Romney.)
A recent poll on the proposed charter school amendment found that 47 percent of respondents support the measure and 37 percent are opposed.
Patch conducted an informal poll of Republican and Democratic elected officials, former officials and activists to get their take on the presidential race here. Most respondents of both parties agreed that Georgia is a safe state for Romney, and they didn’t see the charter school issue affecting the presidential race or vice versa.
“Georgia is irrelevant to the national election,” one Democrat replied.
A Republican respondent predicted that turnout would be lower than 2008 because there has been little advertising targeting the peach state this year.
Of course, it can be hard to predict how many people will turn out on Tuesday. Voter turnout has already been strong in Georgia, as well as many other states that offer early voting.
In Georgia, nearly 1.9 million people took part in advanced voting, which ended Friday.
In 2008, when the advanced voting period was twice as long, slightly more than 2 million early ballots were cast.