Rick Jackson wins.
Rick Jackson wins the Republican runoff for Governor. Defeated Burt Jones, 373,406 to 335,847. Called with 100% confidence at 84 of 159 counties (~8:12 PM ET).
The model named the winner.
Our pre-election model (Victory Modeling) projected Jackson +2.27 and named the winner correctly. The night validated the call - and then some.
called correctly - Jackson won, as projected
county-leader accuracy (137 of 159 counties)
the model under-rated Jackson - he ran ahead of our county projections
- →We projected Jackson +2.27; he won by +5.3. We called a win - he delivered a clearer one.
- →Turnout-weighted, Jackson ran +3.0 points ahead of our county-level projections.
- →Over-performance concentrated in NW Georgia and the exurbs - he flipped several counties the model had as Jones (Floyd, Gordon, Coweta).
We called it live, on air.
We didn't just publish a number the next morning. We narrated the night live - a margin, a county count, and a read every three minutes, on air and on the results board. Here is the call as it actually unfolded.
- 7:41 PM ETJones +5.727 / 159 reporting
First returns are rural and red. We hold the call: the +2.27 Jackson projection rides on the Atlanta metros, and they are still dark. An early Jones lead is exactly the shape we expected.
- 7:48 PM ETJackson +1.241 / 159 reportingLead flip
Lead flip, Jones to Jackson. The metro firewall starts to deliver the call.
- 8:00 PM ETJackson +18.258 / 159 reporting
Metros landing. Gwinnett's first precincts post Jackson +26.8 and the margin swings hard.
- 8:12 PM ETJackson +16.984 / 159 reportingCalled
Called. 100% win probability at 84 counties - about 31 minutes after the first lead flip.
- 9:01 PM ETJackson +12.2146 / 159 reporting
DeKalb 75% in, Cobb 22%, Gwinnett 38% - the margin settles toward the call as Atlanta's vote completes.
- 11:02 PM ETJackson +5.3159 / 159 reportingFinal
Every county in, Fulton included. Final margin Jackson +5.3 - clear of our conservative pre-election call.
Six and a half hours, roughly 130 live updates - one every three minutes - driving the YouTube results board and this brief off the same feed. Pipeline failures across the whole night: zero. Real-time and after-action, one system.
The metro firewall held.
Jackson's path ran through the high-turnout Atlanta-metro ring - and it delivered every big county.
He also outperformed and flipped counties the model had as Jones (Floyd, Gordon, Coweta) - over-performance concentrated in NW Georgia and the exurbs.
One fabric, three reads of the same map.
The model call, the result, and our VictoryText deployment - every county keyed to a single source of truth. Toggle to see how the projection, the margin, and the ground game line up.
How far each county ran from our pre-call projection. Pale = we nailed it; blue = he beat the call, coral = he trailed it.
Targeted GOTV, where it mattered.
We deployed targeted GOTV texting with VictoryText, leaning hardest into Jackson's strongholds - Cobb (the flagship), Cherokee, Forsyth, Chatham. Volume tracked county turnout well, and those are exactly the counties that delivered the win.
counties reached with targeted GOTV texting
correlation of text volume to county turnout
Cobb · Cherokee · Forsyth · Chatham
Where the general gets won.
The runoff data points to a clear general-election deploy plan. The biggest opportunity: lean harder into the high-turnout metro counties we under-saturated in the runoff - they're where the votes are and where we had room to grow.
And redirect spend away from small, already-decided South-GA counties (Lowndes, Colquitt, Thomas) where heavy texting couldn't move a lost result.
Everything above came from one data fabric - live Secretary-of-State results, our Victory Modeling call, and our VictoryText deployments, fused on a single county key. The same system ran the live broadcast (a county-by-county results board on YouTube, zero failures all night) and produced this retrospective. Real-time and after-action, from one source of truth.
Want this running for your race?
The same fabric that called this one - live results, modeling, and ground game on one county key - built on the platform, owned by you.