Tag Archives: Georgia

Political pollsters sitting out the holidays in Georgia

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The Senate run-offs in Georgia are attracting a lot of attention but pollsters are largely not participating:

Photo by Nate Hovee on Pexels.com

After a disastrous November election for the polling industry, when the polls again underestimated President Donald Trump (who lost regardless) as well as GOP candidates down the ballot, pollsters are mostly sidelined in the run-up to the Jan. 5 Georgia elections, which most observers regard as toss-ups.

The public polls that drove so much of the news coverage ahead of November — and generated tremendous distrust afterward — have all but disappeared in Georgia, and they are set to stay that way:Some of the most prolific, best-regarded media and academic pollsters told POLITICO they have no plans to conduct pre-election surveys in Georgia…

Part of the reason public pollsters are staying away from Georgia is the awkward timing of the races. With the elections being held on Jan. 5, the final two weeks of the race are coinciding with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays — typically a time when pollsters refrain from calling Americans on the phone. The voters who would answer a telephone poll or participate in an internet survey over the holidays might be meaningfully different from those who wouldn’t, which would skew the results.

Most major public pollsters are choosing not to field surveys over that time period, but the four campaigns don’t have a choice in the matter. The closing stretch of the races represents their final chances to shift resources or make changes to the television and digital advertising — decisions that will be made using multiple data streams, including polling.

Trying to reach members of the public via telephone or text or web is already hard enough. Response rates have been dropping for years. New devices have new norms. Figuring out who will actually vote is not easy.

Imagine trying to get a good sample during the holidays. On one hand, more people are likely not working and at home. On the other hand, this is time for family, getting away from the daily grind, relaxing. How many people will want to respond to talk about politics? Add in the post-national election letdown, COVID-19 worries, and this could be an extra challenging task during December 2020.

I know answering the door is not in vogue, even before COVID-19, but I wonder how well a door-to-door strategy for polling in Georgia might work. Such an approach would require more work but the races are limited to Georgia. Given that people are likely to be at home, this could reach some people.

New possible Georgia city just for Amazon

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The race is on between cities and communities to put forward an appealing pitch to Amazon regarding its second headquarters. One Georgia community has a unique approach: make a new city just for Amazon.

The Stonecrest City Council voted 4-2 on Monday to de-annex 345 acres of land if the e-commerce giant picks the area for what the company calls HQ2, a corporate hub where Seattle-based Amazon says it will one day house 50,000 jobs…

“There are several major U.S. cities that want Amazon, but none has the branding opportunity we are now offering this visionary company,” said Stonecrest Mayor Jason Lary. “How could you not want your 21st century headquarters to be located in a city named Amazon?”

Amazon is seeking a 175-acre site located near an international airport, public transit and high quality of living. Lary said he hopes MARTA expands rail service to Stonecrest.

The proposed city of Amazon could enter into an agreement with the city of Stonecrest to provide city services, he said.

This would indeed present a unique opportunity for any large company. I could imagine a few stumbling blocks:

  1. Naming a community after your company could have some cool features but also might have drawbacks. If something goes wrong in Amazon, Georgia, is it automatically the company’s fault?
  2. Would Amazon want its own community that is still beholden to its neighbor for city services? Providing all of your own infrastructure could be very expensive but working out deals for essential needs is not necessarily easy.
  3. Would Amazon want the perception of running a company town? This has tended not to work out well in the past. See Pullman as an older example or Facebook as a more recent effort.

I imagine there will be additional creative options proposed by other cities and places. Stay tuned.

Discussion over “Prairie Modern” McMansions in the Atlanta suburbs

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A historian discusses “Prairie Modern” McMansions that have been built in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur:

For the past several years Decatur architect Eric Rawlings has been designing homes in a style he describes as “Prairie Modern.” Rawlings considers the eight Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired homes to be among the best examples in his portfolio. Others in Decatur’s Oakhurst neighborhood call them out-of-place McMansions. All but one of the Prairie Modern homes have been built at teardown sites, single-family residential lots where smaller homes were demolished to make way for the Prairie Moderns…

Rawlings defends his Prairie Modern design and he strongly disagrees that his Prairie Modern homes are McMansions. He left this comment in a 2011 blog post:

I have over 60 built projects in Oakhurst alone and only 8 are Prairie Style, only 22 are New Construction. I have about 40 renovations, many of which preserve the original building with a minor addition not even visible from the street. KC Boyce’s house is only 2100sf with 4 beds and hardly a McMansion by the actual definition. Susan Susanka, author of the Not So Big House, invented the term McMansion and would completely disagree with your interpretation of the definition. His 2 story house with low slope roof is barely taller than the houses near it with steeper roofs. The house on the left is sitting more than 6ft lower because of grade elevations. Scale does not mean height or floor area. It refers to the proportion and size of the pieces and parts that make up the structure. A simplistic two story cube is out of scale compared to a one story house made of smaller forms. A larger house made of the same sized pieces and parts is in Scale with a smaller house made of the same size pieces and parts. The Fayetteville house is 25ft tall, 10ft shorter than the Decatur Zoning limit of 35ft. [Copy pasted as received.]

Despite Rawlings’s assertions that his Prairie Moderns are not McMansions, they are more than twice the size of the homes they replaced. They are also larger than neighboring homes that are contemporaneous to the ones torn down. And, they draw from an architectural vocabulary that is out of character with the community. All attributes that conform to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s definition of a McMansion.

Lots of interesting pictures of homes to illustrate the argument. Several things are worth commenting on:

1. Susan Susanka did not invent the term McMansion. The term dates roughly to the late 1980s.

2. There seems to be some discussion of what exactly constitutes a McMansion:

2a. The historian draws from a definition from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and it seems that the teardown dimension is big here: these houses are bigger than the surrounding homes.

2b. But there is an architectural congruity issue as well: Prairie style homes don’t fit in this particular community. This amuses me: the Prairie style is well-known in the Chicago area because of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Oak Park and Chicago and you could find a number of “Prairie Moderns” in the region. I suppose this style is tied to Prairie regions (Midwest) but wouldn’t the Prairie style make more sense than stucco houses in the Atlanta area? Of course, one could argue that neither style or perhaps any “foreign” styles are appropriate.

3. Adding to the intrigue is that one of the “Prairie Moderns” won an award from Decatur for “Sustainable Design and Energy Efficiency.” So perhaps not everyone has an issue these homes. If so, this would be common in teardown situations: you can often find people arguing for newer homes and owners being able to do what they want for their property and others arguing that new houses should have some architectural congruency with the existing neighborhood and that there should be some design guidelines or standards (perhaps through the creation of a historic preservation district).

h/t Curbed National