Georgia on our Minds: Democrats’ Promising Future in the Deep South
Jackson Smith, Staff Writer
Leading up to the 2020 election, Georgia was, for all intents and purposes, an afterthought on the national stage. While there were murmurs of Georgia emerging as a tossup state, most attention was focused on historically coveted swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. For many voters, it was simply a given that Georgia would remain deep red across the board. After all, the last time Georgia went blue in a presidential election was 1992, and the last time a Democratic senator was elected by popular vote was in 2000.
Come the election, the country watched in awe as Georgia Democrats staged a stunning upset, voting in Joe Biden as president and unseating both incumbent Republican senators. This sweeping victory in the heart of the Deep South has shaken confidence in the strength of the Republican grip not just over Georgia, but the entire region itself.
Biden’s electoral victory and the election of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate stunned Americans of all political backgrounds. Democratic voters in solidly blue states were perhaps the most shocked, as they associated Georgia as part of the Republican political monolith that constituted much of the Southern United States. But was this victory really so surprising?
An incredible amount of painstaking work lay behind the ascendance of the Democratic Party to power in Georgia. Former 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, leveraged her organizations Fair Fight and The New Georgia Project to register hundreds of thousands of eligible voters in the state, targeting demographics most likely to be susceptible to disenfranchisement. In parsing the data of new eligible voters, the party’s path to victory becomes ever clearer. Between the 2018 midterm elections and September 2020, approximately 800,000 new voters were registered in the state of Georgia, with 49% of these new registrations coming from people of color and 45% coming from residents under 30 years of age. With both demographics voting disproportionately heavily for Democratic candidates, the work of Ms. Abrams’s organizations significantly bolstered Georgia’s Democratic electorate ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Moreover, Georgia’s shifting demographics suggested an eventual Democratic presidential victory to be inevitable, not a surprise upset. Atlanta, long a Democratic stronghold and a major cultural and economic center of the Southern United States, saw its population increase by a staggering 18.7% between 2010 and 2019, with similar growth seen in its surrounding suburban counties. This influx of new residents has also shifted the demographics of the state’s electorate. Between 2000 and 2019, the percentage of Black, Hispanic, and Asian Georgians that made up the total eligible electorate increased, whereas the percentage of white Georgians decreased. Among new voters registered in this time period, Black voters also made up the overwhelming plurality at 48%, with white voters coming in a distant second at 26%.
In watching the outcomes of the 2020 election in Georgia, I couldn’t help but let them strike a personal chord. Although born and raised in the Bay Area, I also come from a lineage of deep Southern roots spanning generations. The most progressive member of my family was not among those that hailed from the liberal Mecca of California, but was rather my late grandmother from Gulfport, Mississippi. Admittedly, while I had deep admiration for her tolerant views, I also couldn’t help but perceive her as an exception.
Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff greet supporters at a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia ahead of the January 5 senate runoff election.
Brynn Anderson via AP
The Georgia election popped my political bubble. Growing up in the deepest blue area of one of the deepest blue states, my image of the Deep South was that of regressive, conservative politics mired by discrimination and racism; Southerners like my grandmother, I thought, were few and far between. But after witnessing the successful effort to flip Georgia, I realized that those sharing her similar views were likely much more numerous than I thought. Are these states truly red states, or could the same be accomplished as in Georgia?
Outside of Georgia, the Democratic Party did not seize the same victories it had hoped for, but data indicates a growing opportunity to expand their base and power. Although the 2020 South Carolina Senate Race ended in defeat by incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham over Democratic nominee Jaime Harrison, it still ranked as the second most expensive Senate race of all time—indicating an extremely competitive race in what previously would have counted as a safe Republican seat. In three Southern states—Louisiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina, registered Democratic voters are in fact a plurality.
With a razor-thin margin in both the House and Senate, Democrats must act now & shift attention toward the South. Neglecting such an opportune political region may just spell out their defeat come 2022.