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By: Zach Chan
By: Zach Chan
For those of you who were paying close attention to the presidential race, you may have noticed a regional irregularity of sorts. As expected, the northeast and west coast states went overwhelmingly for Biden, while the Deep South and Great Plains strongly favored Trump. However, there was one outlier; Georgia. Surrounded by a sea of red and there the Peach State was, with a light blue tint, according to the Associated Press’ electoral map. And more recently, after a hand-by-hand recount of the ballots, we’ve seen a state where conservatives could once reliably ignore, give President-elect Biden a lead over President Trump of more than 10,000 votes. Needless to say, such a major shift in voting trends over such a short period of time is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon, so much so that Georgia wasn’t even considered a potential swing state in the weeks leading up to the election. So how then did this happen?
The Georgia Electorate
A good starting point would be explaining where people in our state live exactly and how that matches up with party turnout. For example, the Democrats saw strong support in urban centers, as expected, but had a particularly favorable showing in Atlanta and its suburbs, demonstrated by the NYT’s election map. Now cross-reference that with a population map of Georgia and it becomes quite clear that not only are these areas some of the only ones in the state with major population growth since 2010, but they are really the only counties that account for more than two percent of the Peach State’s population. So, not only are voters mostly based in Democrat-held areas, but these same counties are also seeing extraordinary population growth, further bolstering the DNC’s control over the state.
The Fight Against Voter Suppression
But shifting demographics would be nothing without active participation in the democratic process. That’s where people like Stacey Abrams and Keisha Lance Bottoms came in. After Abrams lost the highly-contested gubernatorial election to Brian Kemp in 2018, she greatly broadened her work with the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight to increase voter turnout in future elections. Based on information from Politico, they worked together in an effort to not only register new voters in urban areas with a historically low turnout but also combat voter suppression tactics. And doing so appears to have worked out as these women, in partnership with various get out the vote movements, were able to register over 800,000 new voters over the two-year period.
So, while we certainly have extraordinary people such as Abrams and our mayor to thank for Georgia’s flip, what’s really at its core is a signal of a massive shift in American politics. Where once we saw the Deep South, a land of prejudice, running years behind the rest of America, a new image is taking shape. And we can hope that image will be one of caring and compassion, maybe even strong enough to wash away our reputation of hate.
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