Democrats have been making gains in Georgia over the last few years, and Stacey Abrams’ narrow 50-49 loss to Republican Brian Kemp in the tainted 2018 election for governor suggests Team Blue has a path to win statewide. However, our new data, which was crunched for us by elections analyst Bill Coningsby, illustrates that the GOP’s gerrymandering will make it difficult for Democrats to take control of either chamber of the state legislature this year.
Democrats ran the state House and Senate, as well as the governorship, in an uninterrupted string from the end of the Reconstruction era until the turn of the 21st century. But in 2002, days after Republican Sonny Perdue won the governor’s office, three Democratic state senators switched parties and handed the chamber to the GOP. Republicans flipped the House two years later, which gave them the trifecta for the first time since Reconstruction. They've kept it ever since, and their legislative gerrymandering in the past decade—as well as the voter suppression tactics made infamous during Kemp's race—have cemented the GOP's dominance.
However, Democrats have managed to gain ground over the last few years thanks to the damage Donald Trump has done to his party’s standing in the well-educated Atlanta suburbs, an area that was still reliably red when the current maps were drawn up. The GOP’s majority in the House dropped from 114-64 to 105-75 after the 2018 elections, and its edge in the Senate also nosed down from 37-19 to 35-21.
Still, while Georgia’s political landscape has changed quite a bit in the nine years since the GOP first redrew the maps (Republicans made small alterations in both chambers in the middle of the decade to protect its incumbents), the legislative gerrymandering remains tough to overcome. While Kemp only narrowly outpaced Abrams statewide, he still took 102 of the state's 180 House seats versus just 78 for Abrams; in the Senate, he won 33 of 56 Senate districts, leaving Abrams with only 23. On a percentage basis, Kemp carried 57% of House seats and 59% of Senate seats despite winning just 50% statewide.
Another way to illustrate just how formidable the GOP maps are is to sort each seat by Kemp's statewide margin and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. Because both chambers have an even number of seats, we average the gubernatorial margin for the middle two seats to come up with the median.
The median district in the House supported Kemp 54-45, a full 8 points to the right of his statewide win. This means that if Democrats are to take the barest of majorities in the lower house, they’d need to win several seats that went decisively for Kemp—a very tough task even in the best of years. The Senate is even tougher: The median seat supported the Republican 59-40, a massive 18 points to the right of the state as a whole.
Democrats do have a shot at further growth, particularly because four GOP House members sit in seats that Abrams won while just one Democrat—Minority Leader Robert Trammell—represented a Kemp district. In the Senate, two Republicans hold Abrams seats while no Democrats hail from Kemp turf. But even if Democrats were to sweep these seats, they'd still be deep in the minority.
The entire House and Senate are up for two-year terms this fall, so this is Team Blue’s last chance to make gains in either chamber before the next round of redistricting. However, an unusual law makes it possible that some races won't be decided until December. Georgia requires candidates competing in the November general election in every race besides the election for president to take a majority to avoid a runoff. (Confusingly, the runoff for state-level races, including legislative contests, is set for Dec. 1, while the second round for federal general elections would take place on Jan. 5, 2021.)
However, it would be almost historic if any legislative race goes to a December runoff. Georgia makes it very difficult for independents and third-party candidates to get on the ballot, so it’s rare for legislative contests to feature more than two candidates. And while some statewide elections—including the 2008 U.S. Senate race and the 2018 contest for secretary of state—have been decided in a second round of voting, the last time this appears to have happened in a regularly scheduled legislative race was 2000.
In that race, Republican state Rep. Randy Sauder switched parties just before the filing deadline and tried to push out Democrat Doug Stoner, who wound up running as an independent. So did Ginger Collins, who was unable to file as a Republican due to Sauder's last-minute switch but made it into the runoff. Democrats spent heavily to protect Sauder but a massive backlash saw Collins smash Sauder 3-to-1. Ironically, by wooing Sauder, Democrats were hoping to make inroads in the affluent Atlanta suburbs—they were just a couple of decades too early.
P.S. You can check out our writeup for the 2018 gubernatorial races by congressional district here. You can also find our master list of statewide election results by congressional and legislative district here, which we'll be updating as we add new states. Additionally, you can find all our data from 2018 and past cycles here.