Turnout by Republicans Was Great. It’s Just That Many of Them Didn’t Vote for Republicans.

After yet another disappointing showing for Republicans in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Tuesday, some conservatives — like Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Kevin McCarthy — have begun to point to a surprising culprit: a failure to take advantage of early voting.

The theory seems to be that Republicans are losing because early voting is giving Democrats a turnout edge. It follows a similar conversation after the midterm elections, when a chorus of conservatives said Republicans needed to start encouraging mail voting.

But as more data becomes available on turnout in this year’s election, it is quite clear that turnout was not the main problem facing Republicans.

In state after state, the final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate — and in some places a much higher rate — than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses.

Instead, high-profile Republicans like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Blake Masters in Arizona lost because Republican-leaning voters decided to cast ballots for Democrats, even as they voted for Republican candidates for U.S. House or other down-ballot races in their states.

Georgia is a fine example. While Mr. Walker may blame turnout for his poor showing in November and earlier this week, other Republican candidates seemed to have no problem at all. Gov. Brian Kemp won by nearly eight points over Stacey Abrams; Republican candidates for House won the most votes on the same day.

Yet Senator Raphael Warnock won in Georgia anyway because a large group of voters willing to back other Republicans weren’t willing to back Mr. Walker.

The final turnout figures make it clear that Republicans — including Mr. Walker — benefited from very favorable turnout last month. Unlike in recent years, Republican primary voters were likelier to vote than Democrats (by a modest margin). Meanwhile, the white turnout rate exceeded the Black turnout rate by the widest margin since 2006.

We went back and looked at the respondents to our pre-election Times/Siena survey, and matched them to post-election vote turnout records. We found that the respondents who said they backed Mr. Walker were actually likelier to vote than those who said they backed Mr. Warnock.

But Mr. Walker still lost.

On Tuesday, Mr. Walker lost again. This time, he lost by three points — two points worse than in November. The final turnout data won’t be in for weeks, but for now it is reasonable to suppose that Mr. Warnock fared better because the turnout was incrementally more favorable to him than it was in November.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats enjoyed a great turnout. All of the Republicans running for statewide office — other than Mr. Walker — could have easily survived an electorate that was two points less favorable.

By our estimates, the 2022 electorate was several points more favorable to Republicans in Georgia than the 2020 electorate — which wasn’t great for Democrats, either.

Any Democratic gains in the runoff almost certainly weren’t because of early voting. After all, this election was held with just one week of early voting, as opposed to three weeks in the general election. The number of Election Day voters actually increased in the runoff. So did the share of votes cast on Election Day. But it was the Democrat who fared better.

Georgia is just one example of a broader national turnout gap, including in many of the places where Republicans blame early voting for their woes.

Take Maricopa County in Arizona. It’s home to Phoenix and around 70 percent of the state’s voters. Some Republicans say — without any clear evidence — they faltered in Arizona because some Maricopa voters were unable to cast ballots at the polls on Election Day, but the final turnout data shows that 75 percent of registered Republicans turned out, compared with 69 percent of Democrats. That was enough to yield an electorate in which registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by nine percentage points. Yet Republicans like Mr. Masters and Kari Lake lost their races for Senate and governor.

Or consider Clark County in Nevada. There, 67 percent of Republicans voted, compared with 57 percent of Democrats, implying that Republicans probably outnumbered Democrats statewide. Yet the Democrat — Catherine Cortez Masto — prevailed in the Senate while Republicans won the governorship and also won the most votes for the House.

Wherever I’ve dug into the data, I see a similar story. You can read comprehensive analyses of North Carolina, Florida or New York, all showing a considerable Republican edge as well.

In the key Senate states mentioned in this article, Republican House candidates received more votes than Democratic ones. The final Times/Siena polls showed that voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada preferred Republican control of the Senate.

It’s fair to say voters in these key states probably preferred Republican control of government, in no small part because more Republicans showed up to vote. They just didn’t find Republican candidates they wanted to support at the top of the ticket.