In terms of electoral votes, Georgia may not have been the largest state that Joe Biden flipped from Donald Trump in 2020, but in terms of sheer shock and elation among Democrats as a whole, it may loom the largest. Nestled between the culturally conservative strongholds of South Carolina and Florida, Biden’s victory in Georgia signaled to the country that Democrats, who spent the better part of Trump’s presidency navel-gazing about how to win back the country’s trust, could do more than just reclaim the blue wall from Republicans – they could actively expand the electoral map into states that felt unwinnable only a few elections earlier. 

If Kamala Harris is going to keep the Peach State in the Democratic column, she’ll have to replicate Biden’s generational performance in Atlanta and its suburbs, whose explosive growth and diversification have made it a deep reservoir of blue votes. But unlike Trump-Biden states like Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, down ballot Democrats in Georgia haven’t been quite as successful at sustaining their 2020 gains in the years since Biden’s election. Yes, Senator Raphael Warnock won reelection in 2022 against a deeply flawed Republican opponent, but Republicans swept every other statewide office, retained control of the state’s legislature, and (thanks to some gerrymandering) won the majority of U.S. House seats that same year.

One of the likely explanations for Republican resilience in Georgia is that, while their state party may be controlled by the kind of far right Trump allies that have caused dysfunction in states like Arizona and Michigan, its most prominent elected officials have not embraced the election conspiracies and extreme rhetoric that have undone other swing state parties. In fact, Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger became unlikely Democratic heroes when they resisted Trump’s demands to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the 2020 election result, and both of them (along with Attorney General Chris Carr) fended off Trump-endorsed challenges from their right during their 2022 primaries en route to comfortable wins in their respective general elections. 

Even though Kemp endorsed Trump this year, that sense of fracture between the former president and Georgia’s Republican establishment remains. Before backtracking via Twitter, Trump attacked Kemp and his wife Marty (who said she planned to write in her husband instead of vote for Trump) at a rally in Atlanta, decrying the governor as “a bad guy,” “a disloyal guy,” and “very average.” The governor has also withstood calls from within his own party to intervene in Trump’s Fulton County prosecution (more on that later) via an oversight panel. Kemp, perhaps unsurprisingly, has been absent from both Trump campaign events and the speakers’ stage at the Republican National Convention, despite the fact that the former president’s campaign could surely benefit from an enthusiastic co-sign from the governor of the state that had the slimmest margin in 2020, and who has a 51% approval rating among Democrats. The fact that Geoff Duncan, Kemp’s lieutenant governor at the time of the election and a fellow Republican, spoke at the DNC and is loudly and proudly throwing his support behind Harris only further illustrates the state’s cold Republican civil war. 

Another complicating factor in Trump’s effort to retake the state is the fact that Trump was indicted on racketeering charges in Fulton County last year for his attempt to overturn the election, a case in which four of his co-defendants have pleaded guilty. But while months of free media reminding Georgia voters that Trump and his allies tried to nullify their votes is certainly a benefit to the Harris campaign, the controversy regarding district attorney Fani Willis’ relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade has muddied the waters a bit, and delayed the case until at least December. 

The lack of a pre-election Trump conviction in Georgia only puts a greater emphasis on the kinds of organizing efforts that Biden and Harris rode to victory in 2020, which not only ran up their numbers in diverse suburban and metropolitan areas, but also mitigated their losing margins in rural areas as well. Fundraising for those efforts, such as Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, had slowed earlier in this election cycle, but perhaps the subsequent jump in enthusiasm post-Biden dropout, and the fact that Democrats once again look competitive in Georgia, will help reverse that trend and provide another Democratic victory. Given how slim the margin will likely be in Georgia, It’s a boost they’ll certainly need if they plan on turning a blue Georgia into a trend, and not just an anomalous one off.  

Outside of the big picture political moves, there are some demographic trends that will play a role in the race for Georgia’s electoral votes as well. The first is that Georgia isn’t only becoming larger, but also less white. As of 2021, the state’s white population had fallen to 50.1%, the lowest in the state’s history, while the Black and Latino populations of Georgia grew. While obviously not every white person votes Republican and not every non-white person votes Democratic, it’s worth noting that these population shifts are occurring because of growth in the Savannah and Atlanta metropolitan areas, while population in rural counties like Telfair and Dooly has decreased by some of the highest rates in the nation. In other words, the counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are not only growing at a faster rate than those that voted for Trump, but the ones that voted for Trump are actually shrinking, a trend that certainly boosts Democratic chances.  

Considering that Georgia voted 4.2% more Republican than the rest of the nation in 2020, Democrats certainly have their work cut out for them when it comes to winning it back in 2024 – it simply starts at a more Republican place than other swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. But the majority of the fundamentals – be it the Trump/Kemp split, the growth of major metro areas, or the former president’s in-state indictments – provide Harris with a solid foundation off of which to build a campaign. Winning Georgia will be an uphill climb for her, yes, but it’s not a stretch goal anymore – it’s firmly in play, and a testament to the ways that the shifting Democratic coalition has expanded the map since Trump’s election in 2016.