This does not make its political evolution any less remarkable. One of the five southern states that voted for George Wallace’s segregation in 1968 joins Virginia as one of two southern states to oppose Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
This year, no other U.S. state has felt more important:
- Biden’s razor-sharp victory in Georgia was decisive in his victory over Electoral College
- The honesty of his IDP election officials opposed Trump’s particular allegations of voter fraud
- His dual Senate run-off will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate, which has enormous implications for what Biden can achieve (or not) during the first two years of his presidency.
What kind of swing state will Georgia be?
The question for Georgia is whether Democratic gains are a real shift or a mirage. After all, there are those who are permanently in the category, such as Florida and Ohio; there are those who move from one party to another, such as Virginia, reliably supported, and there are fluke states.
Barack Obama turned two previously red southern states blue in 2008. But while Virginia has remained in the Democratic column in every successive presidential election and now looks as reliably blue as any other U.S. state, North Carolina has returned to the Republicans, despite being at the top of Democrats’ target list.
The outcome of the Senate’s twin run in Georgia on January 5 will be an indication and test the turnout process that Stacey Abrams undertook with her organization The New Georgia Project, after now losing the 2018 governor’s race .
Acquiring people who have not yet voted and involving younger voters has long been the goal of Democrats who want to appeal to the wide range of minority voters. It helped them win in Georgia, to make it happen.
“We’ve seen dramatic turnout among communities that are not usually the best at candidates. We’ve seen how they are engaged, encouraged and we’ve seen them turn out,” Abrams told CNN on election day in November.
Part of it can also be that attention is paid. Democrats focused national efforts on Georgia and won. They frustrated the Democrats of Texas when they did not pay as much attention to it with visits by national candidates, and lost.
But the most important thing I took out of our conversation last week is that parties are constantly renaming. And today’s Democrats and Republicans may be unrecognizable in the future.
Our phone call, which is lightly edited for length and flow, is below:
A decade-long move to some form of press
WHAT MATTERS: What’s going on in Georgia in general, with a shift to Democrats currently?
GILLESPIE: What we have seen over the past decade is that Democrats have increased their margins in the nationwide elections in Georgia. They got more votes. They narrowed the gap between them and the Republican Party. So if they were to continue on the track, it was only a matter of time before the Democrats would pass the Republicans in terms of the vote.
Winning the presidential election is just one piece of data, so I can not, I can not yet create a trend in this regard. What I suspect we are entering is an era of increasing competition where I expect we will see very narrow margins between Democratic and Republican candidates in nationwide elections, where Democrats win some elections and Republicans some elections.
I do not think Georgia is blue by any imagination, but it is moving towards some form of purple and I will not be surprised if we stay there for the next decade or so.
A new shift changes the state
WHAT MATTERS: How is the Georgia that Biden won different from the Georgia that Carter, or before that, Wallace won?
Southern whites were a fixed part of the New Deal coalition and this began to change after the Civil Rights Movement. It did not happen overnight. It took a long time. It peaked in the 2000s, at the beginning of the decade, with Sonny Perdue’s government victory and a change in the party of control in the State House. And then the end of the decade culminated in the 2010s, when all offices across the country were won by Republican candidates.
This is a very different move than what is happening now. We do not see a major shift in terms of white voters in the state of Georgia, although Georgia has an insignificant number of white Democratic voters. What we are seeing is a growth in the non-white population and in the non-white voters that tends to support democratically in its voting behavior. This, together with a small number of white democratic voters, makes the state more competitive.
We must also acknowledge the efforts of both the Democratic Party and outside groups to reach out to potential Democratic voters, to get them registered to vote and then to get them educated and mobilized so that they can actually vote.
Democrats need a coalition
GILLESPIE: What we have seen happening in the state over the past 20 years is one: the size of the African-American vote makes up 30% of the registered voters in the state.
Given the fact that they are 90% democratic in their voting behavior, this means that they make up the majority of democratic voters in the state.
But you can not win with 90% of 30% of the population, and so you need a small number of white voters. And unlike neighboring states, Georgia is in a position where Democrats can get 30% of White voters.
Unlike South Carolina or Alabama or Mississippi, Georgia has a very fast growing population in Asia and America.
While black voters grew in the 2000s, the growth was most Asian American and Spanish voters in the 2010s. They were 3% of all registered voters in 2012, they were 6% of registered voters in this election cycle, and they are also breaking the Democratic. And if you all want to vote, you can form an electoral coalition of African American, Asian American, Hispanic and liberal white voters.
Atlanta brings new voters to state
WHAT MATTERS: Why are white voters in Georgia possibly more liberal than in neighboring countries in the south?
GILLESPIE: Partly because Atlanta is a financial hub, a technology hub, a hub for the arts. Atlanta attracts well-educated professional voters who are more democratic. Whether you’re going to work at the big universities, or you’re going to work in technology or at one of the Fortune 500 companies, or you’re going to work in Georgia in the arts and entertainment industry here in Atlanta. These are voters who are considered more democratic in their orientation. They may not come from the region either. And they bring different values together to the state.
The parties will change in the future
WHAT MATTERS: It is a state that voted for George Wallace 52 years ago. What will it look like in 50 years?
GILLESPIE: I have no idea what it will look like politically in 50 years. It’s a lot of time. And with one breakthrough election, I can not extrapolate much further in the future. So I want to hesitate to read the data I currently have.
Suffice it to say that if I and my colleagues change about the demographics in the state, I want to be very clear that we are not pursuing a ‘demographics is a type’ argument.
In particular, Georgia is now more democratic because it has growing populations of color that tend to be democratic.
This does not mean that the populations will still be Democratic in 20, 40 or 50 years. Many can change.
Suppose America can deal with its racism problem. You will probably see that people make fewer political decisions based on racial identity.
The parties can also change their attitude. We saw it happen. Who would have thought a hundred years ago that the Democratic Party, the party of segregation, would be the party of civil rights of today? But it happened because the party changed its policy on these issues.
Or who would have thought that Lincoln’s party would be Donald Trump’s party?
The parties as we know them today may be different. They may no longer exist, so I can not speculate so far into the future. And I think it’s also important to understand that voting behavior and party identification are dynamic and that it’s subject to change, depending on what political changes are happening, what decisions our society makes in terms of what issues they want to advocate.