When Democrat Raphael Warnock used his pet beagle in two viral ads to respond to attacks by his Republican rival, Senator Kelly Loeffler, it was more than an ordinary campaign ad.
In both ads, Warnock takes his dog for a walk in a suburban neighborhood, wearing a sweater and jacket on an autumn morning. A series of attacks by Loeffler labeling him a radical leftist appears in the video.
“I think Georgians will see her ads for what they are, don’t they?” he asks in an ad. He then throws the dog poop bag in the trash, and the beagle barks and licks Warnock’s face.
Warnock’s ads, a black pastor running for the first black senator in a state with one of the country’s largest black populations, appeared to be a calculated attempt to neutralize racial attacks against him and a clear illustration of the state’s demographic change, political observers and experts said.
“It is because it is now Black Georgia – it is a suburban Georgia. It is not so rural anymore, and it is not so much an inner city,” said Matthew Hauer, professor of sociology at Florida State University who was previously head of the Applied University Demography Program of Georgia. “You have many neighborhoods that are 30% and 35% black, now that 30 years ago it would have been 5%.”
Seven of the country’s 10 fastest-growing black counties are near Atlanta, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the 2018 census population data. And several populous counties in the state, such as Gwinnett and Cobb, have moved to Democrats in 2016 and again in 2020 with higher margins. Democratic support has also increased in other suburban counties since 2016.
In part, it is these demographic changes, including a huge grassroots vote-building infrastructure built over the years by black activists, that handed the state over to a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992 – and they can give Democrats a boost on Tuesday, twin flows. In addition to Loeffler and Warnock, Democrat Jon Ossoff also faces Republican David Perdue, whose term ended on Sunday.
The experts largely attributed the change to what they described as reverse migration, in which many black families who resettled in northern cities to start over during the Great Migration from 1916 to 1970 returned to the south. The influx of new residents over decades, which includes the growth of the Asian-American and Latin populations, has changed the racial composition of the southern states, such as Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta in particular. They are economically mixed, encompassing people from the working class and high-income professionals.
“All the major racial groups grew up in the 1990s and 2000s,” said Hauer. “Most of that growth occurs in non-white and non-Hispanic populations.”
He added: “And these groups, they have been there for a while. And they start to have a little prestige. They bought houses, they have a little more investment in the community, their children are now growing up going to college, and they are starting to vote. “
Some are lawyers, nurses and doctors, while others are teachers, small business owners and entrepreneurs – attracted by jobs, relatively affordable housing and schools.
Jerry Shannon, a professor of geography at the University of Georgia, explained: “The result of all of this is what you see in some election results, where, say, the suburb of Atlanta has gone from a beautiful Republican to a much more democratic trend. And a lot of that has to do with all these trends. “
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Gwinnett County, near Atlanta, is an example of this. The county has almost tripled its population since 1990 and is now the second most populous county in the state. Thirty years ago, the county had about 350,000 residents, with black residents making up 5% of the population, Asians making up 3% and Hispanics making up less than 2%. Now, the population – almost 940,000 – is 30% black, 22% Hispanic and about 13% Asian.
“With this diversity, there is a political shift,” said State Representative Jasmine Clark, a Democrat who represents Gwinnett County. “The more people of color you have in your area, the more likely you are to become a little more blue.”
Clark, who is also black, narrowly defeated Clay Cox, an incumbent white Republican, by 51% to 49% in 2018. In November, she was re-elected by 55% to 45%.
But demographic changes are only part of the story.
Andra Gillespie, professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, also noted the increase in voter registration and participation. She credits voting activists like Stacey Abrams, who was widely applauded for her work in transforming Georgia into a state of battle.
“I’ve never seen so many signs of Democrats in my neighborhood, I’ve never seen that,” said voter Brenda Kennedy, who is black and has lived in Savannah for about 30 years. “And this is how I know that Georgia is changing. “
Quentin James, one of the founders of The Collective PAC, an organization dedicated to electing black legislators, said the organization helps to give black voters a larger share of the electorate, especially in states like Georgia.
“Black voters are showing up,” said James. “Part of that is when we give black voters something to vote for, great candidates with a great message, they show up.”
He added: “We need to change the attitudes of white voters. This is something the party has to do, but we must not do this work at the expense of engaging and attracting black voters. And that is the challenge.”
James said his organization plans to help get some 26,000 voters to the polls through free ride programs – more than double the number in general elections – among other voter mobilization efforts. He said that building an infrastructure of colored voters was critical.
“I think if someone is looking for lessons learned, I think, across the country, it’s in a place like Georgia and a place like Arizona and a place like Nevada – Democrats have been quietly investing in changing voters there,” he said. he .
Some Republicans also hope to exploit the diverse constituency.
Scott Johnson, who serves on the Georgia Board of Education, said that Republicans have a lot of work to do to attract diverse communities. He lives in Marietta, an expanding suburb of the Atlanta metropolitan area that drove democratic change.
“On the street where I live – it’s a short street, there are seven houses – there are three African American families, one family from the Middle East and three white families who look like me,” Johnson said after attending a Loeffler rally earlier in the day. run-off campaign. “And that’s great. Because we are all friends. And I believe that we all have the same values, for the most part.”
Nse Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, founded by Abrams, said the group registered more than half a million black voters, as well as Asians and Hispanics. The group has laser focused on registering more voters before the second round and making sure they get to the polls.
“I will say that demographic change is the fire and the organization is absolutely the accelerator,” said Ufot.
“Calls, text messages, knocking and postcards, as well as digital ads, all together,” she said. “We have been crazy, annoying and we are changing that. And we are reducing it so that people see going out to vote as a way to break calls.”
At the heart of the strategy, she said, is an “aggressive research agenda” to boost voter-intensive efforts to drive them away.
“Just because we are black, just because we are Generation Y and Generation Z and just because we are women, that does not automatically make us experts in black politics,” said Ufot.
She said that, as a Georgia resident, she saw demographic shifts and changes, especially in the suburbs of Atlanta and in rural areas of the state.
“I think a lot of times when people hear ‘rural voters’ it is a code in their minds for white conservatives, and there are not just progressive whites in rural Georgia, but a bunch of black people,” she said.