ATLANTA – Georgia voters have reasserted the Peach State’s bona fides as a Republican stronghold.
Four years after losing to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia, former President Donald Trump captured the state’s 16 electoral votes Nov. 5 by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 117,000 votes.
Trump won by running up his victory margins in Republican-friendly rural Georgia and cutting into his losses in urban and suburban areas. The GOP also retained its majorities in the General Assembly.
“We’ve shown the country that Georgia remains a red state, with big wins up and down the ticket,” said state House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton. “We will take this mandate from the voters to continue lowering taxes, protecting our neighborhoods and quality of life, and providing more options for Georgia’s students to thrive.”
After Biden’s victory in Georgia in November 2020 followed in short order by the elections of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democrats had reason to believe they had turned the state from red to purple.
But Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said those races were run in unique circumstances. For one thing, Trump encouraged his Republican supporters not to vote in the January 2021 runoffs that elected Ossoff and Warnock, arguing the November election had been stolen from him by widespread fraud.
Bullock said Trump fatigue among the voters at the time was another factor.
“In each of those situations, Donald Trump was president,” Bullock said. “(Voters) are more likely to remember grievances when they’re fresh.”
Bullock said most of the issues voters cared about this year favored the Republicans, including inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration. The Biden administration was widely criticized during the campaign for its handling of all three.
The only major issue that skewed toward the Democrats was abortion, Bullock said.
“(Trump’s victory) was a resounding rejection of the last four years,” said Stephen Lawson, a principal in the Atlanta office of the international law firm Dentons and former spokesman for Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington.
Demographically, Trump gained a historic level of support for a Republican in Georgia and elsewhere from Latinos, winning nearly half of the Latino vote. His campaign worked to appeal to Latino voters, particularly men.
“Republicans have figured out they can’t retain a majority just on white votes,” Bullock said. “They had to go after the Latino vote.”
On the other hand, Harris didn’t draw the dominant outpouring of women voters that Democrats were expecting two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion as a constitutional right.
Her loss coupled with Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 leaves major party women nominees for president 0-2.
“(Women) are perceived to be more liberal,” Bullock said. “It’s not necessarily accurate, but it’s a perception.”
Georgia Democrats see a silver lining in their defeat at the presidential level. U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, pointed to the loss of at least two Republican seats in the state House of Representatives.
Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Mesha Mainor was soundly defeated in a heavily Democratic Atlanta district, and GOP Rep. Ken Vance of Milledgeville was ousted in a new majority-Black district drawn by the General Assembly during last year’s redistricting special session.
While the Democrats failed to gain any state Senate seats, they didn’t lose any either, leaving Republicans holding a majority of 33 seats to 23.
“The momentum remains with Democrats fighting for reproductive freedom, Medicaid expansion, gun safety, and an economy that puts working families first,” Williams said. “Georgia is still a battleground, and we are ready for the next fight.”
Bullock pointed out that Trump’s 117,000-vote victory margin over Harris in Georgia translates to just two points.
“Georgia is going to continue to be a pretty competitive state,” he said. “We’re more red than blue, but we’re still going to be among the tossup states.”