This does not make his political evolution any less remarkable. One of the five southern states that voted for segregationist George Wallace in 1968, he joins Virginia as one of two southern states to oppose Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
This year, no other US state has felt more important:
- Biden’s fragile victory in Georgia was decisive in his victory at the electoral college
- The honesty of his Republican Party election officials countered Trump’s false claims about electoral fraud
- His two second rounds in the Senate will determine which party controls the United States Senate, which has huge implications for what Biden can accomplish (or not) during the first two years of his presidency.
What kind of decisive state will Georgia be?
The question for Georgia is whether Democratic gains signal real change or a mirage. After all, among undecided states, there are those that are permanently in the category, such as Florida and Ohio, there are those that make the transition from reliable support from one part to another, such as Virginia, and there are fortuitous states.
Barack Obama turned two formerly red southern states into blue ones in 2008. But while Virginia remained in the Democratic column in each successive presidential election and now looks as blue as any other US state, North Carolina has turned back to Republicans, although has remained at the top of the Democrats’ target list.
The outcome of the Senate’s second double round in Georgia on January 5 will have some nominations and will test the participation operation that Stacey Abrams undertook with his organization The New Georgia Project after she narrowly missed the 2018 governor race there.
Getting people who don’t vote and engaging younger voters has long been the goal of Democrats who want to attract the wide range of minority voters. Making it happen was what helped them win in Georgia.
“We saw dramatic participation among communities that are not normally in the minds of the candidates. We saw them engaged, encouraged and watched them attend,” Abrams told CNN on election day in November.
Part of it can also be about paying attention. Democrats focused their national efforts on Georgia and won. They frustrated Texas Democrats when they didn’t pay much attention there with visits from national candidates and lost.
But the most important thing I learned from our conversation last week is that the parties are constantly realigning themselves. And today’s Democrats and Republicans may be unrecognizable in the future.
Our phone conversation, slightly edited for duration and flow, is below:
A decades-long shift to some form of purple
WHAT MATTERS: What is happening in Georgia, broadly speaking, with a shift towards Democrats now?
GILLESPIE: What we’ve seen in the past decade is that in the state elections in Georgia, Democrats have increased their margins. They have won more votes. They are closing the gap between them and the Republican Party. So if they intended to continue on that path, it was only a matter of time before Democrats approved Republicans in terms of voting.
Winning the presidential election is just a given, so I cannot, I cannot create a trend in this regard. What I suspect we are entering is an era of growing competition, in which I hope to continue to see very narrow margins between Democratic and Republican candidates in state elections, in which Democrats win some elections and republicans some elections.
I don’t think Georgia is blue by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s moving to some form of purple and I wouldn’t be surprised if we stay there for, you know, the next decade or so.
A new change is changing the state
WHAT MATTERS: How is the Georgia that Biden won different from the Georgia that Carter won, or before that, Wallace?
Southern whites were a firm part of the New Deal coalition, and that begins to change after the Civil Rights Movement. This did not happen overnight. It took a long time. It culminated in the 2000s, at the beginning of the decade, with the victory for governor of Sonny Perdue and a change of control party in the state Chamber of Deputies. And then it culminated in the 2010s, at the end of the decade, when all state positions were won by Republican candidates.
This is a very different change from what is happening now. We are not seeing a major shift in terms of white voters in the state of Georgia, although Georgia has an unremarkable number of white Democratic voters. What we are seeing is a growth in the non-white population and in the non-white electorate that tends to incline Democrats in their electoral behavior. This, along with a non-trivial number of white Democratic voters, is making the state more competitive.
We also have to give credit to the efforts of both the Democratic Party and outside groups to reach out to prospective Democratic voters, get them registered to vote, and then educate and mobilize them to actually vote.
Democrats need a coalition
GILLESPIE: What we have seen happen in the last 20 years in the state is one: the size of the African American vote reaches 30% of registered voters in the state.
Given the fact that they are 90% Democratic in their electoral behavior, this means that they constitute the majority of Democratic voters in the state.
But you can’t win with 90% to 30% of the population, so you need a non-trivial number of white voters. And unlike neighboring states, Georgia is in a position where Democrats can get 30% of white voters.
Georgia, unlike South Carolina, Alabama or Mississippi, has a very fast-growing Asian American and Hispanic population.
Although the black electorate grew in the 2000s, the growth was the majority of Asian American and Hispanic voters in the 2010s. They were 3% of all registered voters in 2012, 6% of registered voters in this electoral cycle and they also break the Democratic Party. And if you can get everyone to vote, you can form a winning electoral coalition of African American, Asian, Hispanic and white liberal voters.
Atlanta brings new voters to the state
WHAT MATTERS: Why are white voters in Georgia potentially more liberal than in neighboring southern states?
GILLESPIE: Partly because Atlanta is a financial center, a technology center, an arts center. Atlanta is attracting well-educated, more democratic, professional voters. Whether you come to work for top universities, work with technology or at one of the Fortune 500 companies, or come to Georgia to work in the arts and entertainment industry here in Atlanta. These are voters considered more democratic in their orientation. They may also not be from the region. And they bring different values to the state with them.
The parties will change in the future
WHAT MATTERS: This is a state that voted for George Wallace 52 years ago. How will it be in 50 years?
GILLESPIE: I have no idea what it will be like politically in 50 years. Is a long time. And with a revolutionary election, I cannot extrapolate much in the future. So, I want to hesitate to read the data I have now.
Suffice it to say that when my colleagues and I talk about demographic changes in the state, I want to make it very clear that we are not making a kind of ‘demography is fate’ argument.
In particular, Georgia is more democratic now because it has a growing population of blacks predisposed to be Democrats in orientation.
This does not mean that 20 or 40 or 50 years from now these populations will still have a democratic orientation. A lot can change.
Let’s say that America can control its racism problem. You will likely see people making fewer political decisions based on racial identity.
The parties can also change their attitudes. We saw it happen. A hundred years ago, who would have thought that the Democratic Party, the segregation party, would be the Civil Rights party today? But that was because the party changed its policies on these issues.
Or who would have thought that Lincoln’s party would be Donald Trump’s party?
The parties as we know them today can be different. They may no longer exist, so I can’t speculate that far in the future. And I think it is also important to understand that electoral behavior and party identification are dynamic and subject to change, depending on what political changes are taking place, what decisions our society makes in terms of what issues they want to defend.