If there’s one big, famous success story for dems in 2020, it’s Georgia going blue for president after a couple decades of solid red. Than, in a senate race featuring a couple hilariously entertaining runoff debates (“Ossoff debated a ghost and Warnock debated a robot” is the youtube description) followed the general election by chosing a couple D senators to get that desired 50. (And than that 50 became frustrating again). And it has a well known individual person in Stacey Abrams who people can point to. When writing about turning states blue, Georgia’s the natural place to start.
Other states here.
Which Organization are turning Georgia Blue
There’s quite a lot, as described here, but it looks like the big ones of New georgia project and Fair Fight are still going
https://fairfight.com/
https://newgeorgiaproject.org/about/
https://blackvotersmatterfund.org/
The state party itself, from my outside view, seems to operate pretty solidly also.
https://www.georgiademocrat.org/#
Deep South vs. Big City, Why is Georgia going swing now?
If you are like me and really became aware of national elections in 2004 or 2000, Georgia was a stereotypical Deep South red state. If you are older and remember the Clinton elections and before, Georgia was a stereotypical Deep South state with a strong dem party going red nationally, than swingy again. Here is the partisan lean over the past couple decades.
That little dip in the beginning is the tail end of Georgia getting more Republican. Look at a more full picture in this spreadsheet, and you’ll see a state go from flexible to strongly Republican, than in the past two presidential elections getting rapidly more swingy. Two trend create this trend:
Yall eatin Red Barbecue in the Deep South
(Disclaimer: I’ve lived around Chicago for most of my life, and the Great Lakes for all of it.)
In 2004, it was common to show confederate maps compared to the presidential election map, and they lined up quite closely. 15 years later, the south is still the most Republican part of the country, voting about 13% more republican than the country as a whole.
Look at Deep Southern states without a large, fast growing metro area (I went with Alabama for this), and you can see some states continue to get more republican for this time period. The South as a whole follows a pretty standard pattern, it was solidly democratic until the 1960’s and 1970’s, but since than has voted Republican more often for president, while adding more Republicans to downballot offices, and finally switching party identificiation as legacy registered democrats start voting Republican.
Making this region Republican is a strong racial split. For Democrats we have black voters, who tend to vote something like 80-90% for democrats depending on the state. But these voters are still a minority in even the most heavily black states, competing against them are strongly Republican white voters, going around 70-80% Republicans in various southern states. These white voters are some of the strongest in the country, and are the most likely exception to my “politicians/parties should have a little investment in all demographics” view of political campaigns.
Georgia followed these trends into the 2000’s and became very Republicans. But it seems that the republican shift of non-city southern white voters has maxed out, and a second trend has taken over.
Beautiful Busy Bountiful Big Cities and their Suburbs
We all know that big cities tend to vote for democrats, and recently this blueness has spilled over into suburbs. Georgia is no exception, the counties surrounding Atlanta have all gotten more blue over the past few decades, changing from voting like the more rural parts of the state to a blue blob of several counties.
Helping in many states, including Georgia, is the metro area’s faster growth than the state as a whole. The Atlanta area (defined by the census) grew about 28% from 2000-2010, and 15% from 2010 to 2020, compared to 8% and 5% for the rest of the state. Growing more dem leaning and growing period means an increasing number of blue votes, unless something greatly changes. If Georgia’s stereotypical southern noncity white vote really is maxed out, the state will get more blue over time unless politics greatly changes.
The effect of the Atlanta metro area is hard to see in demographics, surprisingly. The white vote based on this exit poll is around 70%, less than Mississippi (from another exit poll) and Alabama but not by that much, the black vote is similarly a somewhat higher fraction but a similar percent of the vote. Possibly chalk this up to exit polls being odd, or Georgia’s citites attracting a larger amount of nonwhite votes in general, showing up as a higher black and latino population, and various small advantages that add up. Which brings us to:
What Role Stacey Abrams? And Can we Copy her in Our own states?
(Well, not my state, I’m in Illinois while writing this, no special effort needed unless things really change.)
It’s safe to say Abrams is liked by just about anybody. Except rabid, obsessive Harris fans (yes, they exist). And one person on another blog I read insisting that Abrams’s organizations were misusing money or taking money or lying or such during the 2018 governor election. (He has since said almost nothing). But outside angry internet people, Abrams is very respected and popular if you support democrats and follow politics well. But what did abrams actually do?
Abrams is (was?) an early practitioner of a different campaigning style: instead of trying to win by finding what (almost always white) moderates like, she instead started a bunch of organizations to find dem leaning/black (these overlap strongly in Georgia, as earlier parts of this post describe) and use various sorts of on the ground organization to push them to show up and vote. This seems like something any politician should be trying to do, it is a source of votes and those are always helpful, but apparently this style of campaigning created conflict with people who preferred the appeal to moderates route.
Did Abrams make a difference in Georgia elections? I can’t say for sure, demographics point to the state shifting and I don’t for a post like this have a good way to analyze this question. But in a close election like 2020 was, I’d bet a ton of money it did. Also likely is that organizing in this way toughens up and improves how the state party functions, always a valuable thing to do (See Florida, state of) similar types of organizing was at work in Arizona, and with 2020 being such a high turnout elections, similar organizations are a valuable tool in elections in general.
How useful is this method of organizing in other states? Georgia is a highly polarized state, the sort of state where clear dem leaners and rep leaners exist, and not a lot of people will be switching. This makes going after swing voters less valuable, and turnout out new voters, relatively more valuable than places like the Great Lakes. However, this style clearly contributes to, say, Arizona wins, and there are pockets in most states where dem leaners live who otherwise could use a push to show up.
Peachy Progs vs. Kudzu Mods in Georgia
Is Georgia a good place to get some proggier/leftier politicians elected? If you wanted the big infrastructure plus bit of everything bill get put together, you’ll know why you want less conservadems/moderates and more candidates like Radical Liberal Raphael Warnock, who supports a whole bunch of useful programs (Destroying America isn’t so great, but no one’s perfect.) Bordeaux was one of the moderate hold up the bill house crew, so this applies a bit more than usual to Georgia.
I don’t have good solid demographics to look at yet, but eyeballing things I could see either way on Georgia. If you go by a lot of punditry and internet commentary, being a heavily black Southern states means unlikely. (The idea of the moderate black voter means you must go moderate is one of the slimier ones in the past few years...but that’s for another post.) Going by me eyeballing the state, Georgia looks like a possibly good location to have some better people. Atlanta is a big growing, highly educated city in the same general way as, say, Seattle, and the state is polarized enough where you can count on people to not run away if someone goes ickily leftish.
As for the actual representatives, right now Georgia seems to have three strongly blue districts and two close ones, of the three, two of these have good solid members elected, and Nikema Williams looks like a good catch when I take a quick look at ideology/voting ratings. The senators have filled in as generic democrats, with Warnock more focused on fixing up elections, which is hard to evaluate.
Of course, there are fewer blue districts than there might be thanks to gerrymandering, and with redistricting after 2020 we will have to see how the ones ones go. But fixing gerrymandering requires either court action or electing a different state government, which leads to….
Senate race, Governor race rematch, Georgia will be big in 2022.
If I were to rank the states as specifically as possible for 2022 elections, Georgia wouldn’t be the top one, but it would be pretty close. In the actual election where any swing state will get lots of support, Georgia’s getting a lot of attention because it has some valuable elections going on.
The big two races are out hero Abrams almost certainly running for governor again, plus Radical Liberal (this is his actual first name, naming practices in Georgia can be weird) Raphael Warnock extending his senate term. Also important are a number of state government positions, including secretary of state and some legislative seats.
Georgia’s state legislature is one of several angry that democrats cheated by having more votes, and are putting a number of vote interference laws and possible other laws to just change election results, which is a very scary situation. The legislature itself is highly gerrymandered, so outside of court action or some other laws reserving it if these are even possible, it isn’t flipping in 2021. (This is why I’d rank Georgia close to, but not the most important, state in 2022. Others have flippable or controllable legislatures) Congressional maps will be chosen next month by the current state government, so gerrymandering will continue there unless a law is passed by congress or court actions fix it. If voting is interfered with in 2024, a dem controlled governor’s office and/or secretary of state can maybe? possibly? maybe? help with some possible laws, though I don’t know the details enough to say for sure.
Warnock in the senate is already raising lots of money for what will be an expensive race, so that part of the election seems to be getting taken care of.
So, to summarize. Send money to Georgia to help organizers there. And Atlanta’s growing.