Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, celebrating a comfortable re-election victory, joked that “it looks like the reports of my political death have been greatly exaggerated.”
The conservative governor topped Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams last November in a rematch of their razor-thin 2018 gubernatorial showdown, as Republicans swept all the statewide offices decided on election night and kept their majorities in both houses of the legislature.
But a month later, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock narrowly edged Republican challenger and University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker to secure a full six-year term representing the Peach State in the Senate.
The Kemp and Warnock split decision exemplified Georgia’s tilt toward the center. Once a reliably red state, Georgia has transformed into a premiere general election battleground in statewide contests.
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In 2020, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, thanks to a razor-thin victory over then-President Donald Trump, to become the first Democrat in over a quarter-century to carry the state in a presidential contest. And two months later, Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff secured narrow victories to sweep Georgia’s twin Senate runoff elections. The wins — the first by any Democrat in a Senate election in Georgia in 20 years — gave their party the majority in the chamber.
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So what happened in Georgia?
Veteran Georgia-based political scientist M.V. (Trey) Hood noted that “there’s a continuing demographic shift” which he says is “having an effect.”
Hood, director of the University of Georgia’s survey research center, pointed to the “increasing number of racial minorities living” in Atlanta’s suburbs and exurbs. He also noted that “you’ve got a lot of in-migration from other states, especially outside of the South… Those people tend to…
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