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Georgia's political geography: A growing and diverse state gets more competitive – The Washington Post

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Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)

Eighth in a series on swing states

When they sifted through the wreckage of the 2016 election, and reckoned with their losses in the Midwest, Democrats were surprised by what they found in Georgia. The state had not voted for a Democratic president since 1992, and it delivered 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump, continuing the pattern.

But something had happened in the suburbs. In defeat, Hillary Clinton had won more raw votes out of Georgia than any Democratic nominee in history, and she had carried the GOP’s longtime stronghold — the fast-growing counties just outside of Atlanta. Nearly half of the state’s votes came from the Atlanta metro region, and the modern GOP has never struggled so much there.

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Even in triumph, Republicans began to worry. Once-conservative Cobb County elected a new GOP chair on the promise to “Make Cobb Red Again.” A 2017 special election for a House seat in the county went down to the wire. One year later, Democrats flipped that seat and nearly won another in Atlanta’s suburbs, as Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams lost the closest race for governor in 24 years.

“Democrats, let’s do better,” Abrams wrote in a 2019 memo to party leaders. “Any decision less than full investment in Georgia would amount to strategic malpractice.”

Have Democrats put everything they could into the state since then? Arguably not — but that’s changing. Joe Biden’s cash-flush campaign has bought ads in the state, and Abrams’s group Fair Fight Georgia has registered hundreds of thousands of voters and pumped up requests for absentee ballots. The Trump campaign has not taken the state for granted, with the president dropping into Atlanta last week to roll out his “platinum plan” for Black Americans.


Georgia’s shift from 2012 to 2016

Clinton was the first Democrat since Carter to win Cobb and Gwinnett counties, suburban GOP strongholds.

GOP won

by 250K

Dem. won by

500K votes

Atlanta Suburbs

2016

margin

Black Belt

South Georgia

North Georgia

Statewide 2016 margin

Democrats added to those gains in 2018, but Republicans held the state again with landslide support from north and south of Atlanta.

How Georgia shifted from 2012 to 2016

Clinton was the first Democrat since Carter to win Cobb and Gwinnett counties, suburban GOP strongholds.

GOP won

by 250K

Dem. won by

500K votes

Atlanta Suburbs

2016

margin

Black Belt

South Georgia

North Georgia

Statewide 2016 margin

Democrats added to those gains in 2018, but Republicans held the state again with landslide support from north and south of Atlanta.

How Georgia shifted from 2012 to 2016

Clinton was the first Democrat since Carter to win Cobb and Gwinnett counties, suburban Republican strongholds.

Dem. won by

500K votes

GOP won

by 250K

Atlanta Suburbs

2016

margin

Black Belt

South Georgia

North Georgia

Statewide 2016 margin

Democrats added to those gains in 2018, but Republicans held the state again with landslide support from north and south of Atlanta.

Like the rest of the Deep South, Georgia was dominated by conservative Democrats for more than a century, from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Democrats held both houses of Georgia’s legislature until 2002 — then, in a single election, lost both, kicking off a decade of decline. Conservative Democrats below the “Gnat Line,” shorthand for where the state’s Piedmont region ends and its hotter plains begin, bolted the party and never came back.

The math only changed as the electorate got larger and more diverse. In 2004, when Democrats made no effort in the state, 70 percent of all voters were White, according to exit polls. In 2016, the White share of the electorate fell to 60 percent and Democrats won the state’s suburban Cobb and Gwinnett counties, for the first time since Jimmy Carter won the presidency. They added to those gains in 2018, but Republicans held out with landslide support from White voters north and south of Atlanta.

Republicans are slightly more nervous about those suburbs, but in a war of attrition, they have more votes to spare. We’ve split Georgia into six political “states,” starting with Atlanta, where Republicans were struggling before Trump’s presidency and have lost ground since. The Atlanta suburbs, six counties with interstate access to the city, have become the state’s most competitive region. North Georgia, the Piedmont and South Georgia are solidly Republican, and the party may have some more votes to turn out there. The Black Belt, with fewer votes than these other regions, always backs Democrats — but a turnout difference of just 20,000 or 30,000 votes, with rural Black voters being enthusiastic to cast ballots and confident those ballots will count, could swing a close statewide election.

This is the eighth in a series breaking down the key swing states of 2020, showing how electoral trends played out over the past few years and where the shift in votes really mattered. See all 50 states here.

Atlanta

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has a higher share of people living in cities than average.
  • Has more non-White residents than average.
  • Has more college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

The “capital of the south” welcomes tens of thousands of new residents every year, and they have only made Atlanta bluer. In 2016, Clinton won more votes in the three core counties of metro Atlanta than any Democrat in history. Donald Trump won fewer votes here than any Republican nominee in 20 years. Months later, he alienated Atlanta’s Black voters further by insulting Rep. John Lewis (D), insisting that the Civil Rights icon’s district was in “horrible shape” and “infested” with crime.

Lewis died this year, and Atlanta continues to get bluer. DeKalb County is one of the few majority-Black places in the country where turnout in 2016 was markedly higher than 2012, and in 2018, Abrams turned out 10,000 more voters than Clinton had — an unheard-of surge from a presidential year to a midterm. Republicans still run strong in the north end of Fulton County, around cities like Roswell — just not as strong as they once did, as those cities have grown more diverse and less conservative.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

181,710

Hillary Clinton

626,686

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 181,710
  • Hillary Clinton: 626,686

Counties included: Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton

Atlanta Burbs

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has a higher share of people living in cities than average.
  • Has more non-White residents than average.
  • Has more college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

The exurbs of Atlanta were built by segregation and “White flight.” The city’s geographic expansion halted in the 1960s, when such places as Sandy Springs rejected annexation; nearby Marietta became a bulwark of White conservative politics, starting Newt Gingrich on his journey to becoming House speaker.

But a steady stream of immigrants and escapees from other states has turned the region blue, with Cobb County backing Clinton by two points, then supporting Abrams by nine points. A region that gave Mitt Romney a 60,000-vote victory in 2012 gave Clinton a 48,000-vote margin, then went more solidly for Abrams and Democratic candidates, with the party picking up 11 seats in the state legislature largely through gains in these suburbs.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

404,885

Hillary Clinton

452,450

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 404,885
  • Hillary Clinton: 452,450

Counties included: Cobb, Douglas, Gwinnett, Henry, Newton, Rockdale

North Georgia

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
  • Has fewer non-White residents than average.
  • Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

The reddest part of Georgia has also been making the most news lately — conservative activist and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene won the Republican nomination to represent the 14th Congressional District, and the party threw up its hands. Every county in the region backed Trump in 2016, with the GOP nominee carrying all but three precincts, in the cities of Dalton and Rome. And Trump added more than 50,000 votes to Romney’s 2012 total, finding White voters without college degrees who had been sitting out elections.

Democrats added some votes, too, because there was not much room to fall. In the past few decades, only Zell Miller, who’d been born in Towns County, was able to win votes here for Democrats. The GOP now clears 80 percent of the vote in most of northwestern and northeastern Georgia, and Gov. Brian Kemp’s 2018 win came after he did what looked unlikely — he made it even redder.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

549,131

Hillary Clinton

156,310

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 549,131
  • Hillary Clinton: 156,310

Counties included: Banks, Bartow, Catoosa, Chattooga, Cherokee, Dade, Dawson, Elbert, Fannin, Floyd, Forsyth, Franklin, Gilmer, Gordon, Habersham, Hall, Haralson, Hart, Lumpkin, Murray, Paulding, Pickens, Polk, Rabun, Stephens, Towns, Union, Walker, White, Whitfield

Black Belt

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has an average share of people living in cities.
  • Has more non-White residents than average.
  • Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

Georgia, as with much of the Deep South, was built on the backs of enslaved Black people, and the legacy of the cotton trade stretches across the middle of the state. Fifteen counties in the region have majority-Black populations and have voted reliably for Democrats even as Whiter counties have shifted toward the GOP. They’re essential to Biden’s chances in the state, but no nominee has maximized turnout here since Barack Obama’s two campaigns.

From 2012 to 2016, the falloff was worth around 25,000 votes. The region’s biggest cities, Augusta, Columbus and Macon, got bluer, while Democratic margins everywhere else slightly declined. Four small counties also flipped from narrowly blue to narrowly red — Dooly, Peach, Quitman, Twiggs — as Black turnout declined, and they stayed red in 2018, even as Democratic turnout grew in urban areas. But like the Black Belt in other parts of the South, the region is slowly losing population, capping the number of new votes either party can win.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

194,353

Hillary Clinton

235,000

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 194,353
  • Hillary Clinton: 235,000

Counties included: Baker, Bibb, Burke, Calhoun, Chattahoochee, Clay, Dooly, Dougherty, Early, Glascock, Hancock, Houston, Jefferson, Lee, Macon, Marion, McDuffie, Miller, Mitchell, Muscogee, Peach, Quitman, Randolph, Richmond, Schley, Stewart, Sumter, Talbot, Taliaferro, Taylor, Terrell, Twiggs, Warren, Washington, Webster, Wilkinson

Piedmont

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
  • Has fewer non-White residents than average.
  • Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

Outside of Atlanta, central Georgia is mostly rural and overwhelmingly Republican, with a few dots of blue. The University of Georgia helped make Athens one of the most liberal parts of the state, if not as liberal (or as vote-rich) as similar college towns in the Midwest and Northeast, and the places closest to Atlanta moved marginally toward the Democrats.

The rest of the region is overwhelmingly White and solidly Republican, with the party gaining strength here in every election since 2010. (Obama’s 2008 bid made a few inroads here, but only in that election.) Across these 30 counties, Trump ran roughly 17,000 votes ahead of Romney; Clinton ran roughly 7,000 votes ahead of Obama. Winning here by a smaller margin, over a candidate who has not inherited all of Clinton’s problems with White working-class voters, could hurt the GOP.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

399,873

Hillary Clinton

197,567

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 399,873
  • Hillary Clinton: 197,567

Counties included: Baldwin, Barrow, Butts, Carroll, Clarke, Columbia, Coweta, Crawford, Fayette, Greene, Harris, Heard, Jackson, Jasper, Jones, Lamar, Lincoln, Madison, Meriwether, Monroe, Morgan, Oconee, Oglethorpe, Pike, Putnam, Spalding, Troup, Upson, Walton, Wilkes

South Georgia

Compared with the state overall, the voting population here …

  • Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
  • Has fewer non-White residents than average.
  • Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
Image: (Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post)
Image: Illustrated map of Arizona.

There are two very different political climates south of the Gnat Line; most voters live in the one that’s shifting right. Outside of Savannah and its suburbs in Bryan County, every single part of the region voted by a bigger margin for Trump than for Romney; tiny Brantley County gave Trump a 78-point margin, one of his biggest in the entire state. Across all six of our “states,” this is the only one where Clinton ran behind Obama, with Trump expanding the GOP’s margin from nearly 140,000 votes to more than 170,000 votes.

Those trends didn’t change in 2018, and strong turnout here helped Republicans cross 50 percent of the statewide vote, even though the population of southwestern Georgia has been shrinking. Like the Piedmont, this is a deep red region with a few dashes of blue in small cities; Democrats won the city of Valdosta, for example, while nearby Moody Air Force Base is a Republican stronghold. A good night for Republicans will involve landslide margins out of Georgia’s southern counties; an upset by Democrats will require enough gains elsewhere to make that irrelevant.

2016 vote total

Donald Trump

359,062

Hillary Clinton

209,990

2016 vote totals
  • Donald Trump: 359,062
  • Hillary Clinton: 209,990

Counties included: Appling, Atkinson, Bacon, Ben Hill, Berrien, Bleckley, Brantley, Brooks, Bryan, Bulloch, Camden, Candler, Charlton, Chatham, Clinch, Coffee, Colquitt, Cook, Crisp, Decatur, Dodge, Echols, Effingham, Emanuel, Evans, Glynn, Grady, Irwin, Jeff Davis, Jenkins, Johnson, Lanier, Laurens, Liberty, Long, Lowndes, McIntosh, Montgomery, Pierce, Pulaski, Screven, Seminole, Tattnall, Telfair, Thomas, Tift, Toombs, Treutlen, Turner, Ware, Wayne, Wheeler, Wilcox, Worth

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
CNN

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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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Federal government promising a 'renters' bill of rights' in upcoming budget – CBC.ca

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government will introduce new measures — including a new “bill of rights” — that he says will help protect those who rent their homes as part of the upcoming budget.

Trudeau said the new measures are specifically geared toward younger people, who are renting more than previous generations.

“It’s about changing the rules of the game in a way that meets young people where they are,” he said on Wednesday.

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Ottawa will work with provinces and territories to develop a “renters’ bill of rights” that would introduce a national standard lease agreement and implement requirements for landlords to disclose an apartment’s pricing history to allow tenants to negotiate their rent.

The new measures will also include a $15-million fund for provincial legal aid organizations that help tenants fight against “renovictions” and landlord abuse.

The Liberals are also proposing to change federal rules so that making rental payments on time will count toward someone’s credit scores, something Trudeau said is meant to help renters looking to one day buy a house.

“If you look at someone who pays a $2,000 [per month] mortgage, they’re getting recognition and credit for that from their bank as part of their credit score,” the prime minister said.

“But if you’re paying $2,000 a month on rent, you get no kudos.”

Typically the government doesn’t discuss what is in an annual budget until it is introduced in the House of Commons. But the announcement was made weeks prior to the release of the Liberals’ next budget, which is slated to drop on April 16.

Releasing tidbits from the budget ahead of time is part of a new communications strategy for the Liberals, sources told CBC News. Trudeau and his ministers are expected to make a number of similar announcements in the run-up to the budget, the sources said.

WATCH | Trudeau says new measures aim to help tenants: 

Liberals promise ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to fight housing crisis

5 hours ago

Duration 2:07

The Liberals are looking to create a ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to help deal with Canada’s housing crisis. Justin Trudeau says the plan is geared toward younger people suffering from a rising cost of living. The Conservatives call the measures meaningless.

Before revealing the planned rental measures on Wednesday, Trudeau took a moment to plug the April 16 fiscal plan, saying that the budget will be about “fairness.”

“For Canada to succeed, we need everyone to succeed,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland joined Trudeau for his announcement and hinted about further announcements ahead of budget day.

“Over the coming days and in the April budget, we are going to launch a no-holds-barred plan to wrestle down the cost of owning and renting a home,” she said.

Wednesday’s announcements came on the same day that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a report that found a surge in new apartment construction drove housing start increases in several major Canadian cities last year.

But the report also cautions that demand continues to outweigh supply.

The opposition Conservatives, who have enjoyed a healthy lead in recent polls, have made housing — and other cost-of-living issues — a key point of attack against the governing Liberals.

Following his announcement, Trudeau was asked whether he thinks he bears any responsibility for people feeling left behind in the current economy and whether the new measures would be enough to convince younger people to support him in the next election.

In response, Trudeau suggested that a recent rise in the cost of living is not unique to Canada.

“Young people who are key to our present, and obviously key to our future, are seeing a system that is stacked against them. That’s true in Canada but also true elsewhere around the world,” he said. “What we’re focused on now is making sure that young people can see their success in the economy.”

Opposition parties criticize Liberal announcement

Scott Aitchison, the Conservative housing critic, said Wednesday’s announcement was Liberal posturing that won’t get results.

“Today’s photo op is just another set of meaningless measures that won’t result in building the homes Canadians need,” he said in a statement.

NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan criticized the announcement for not going far enough.

“The Liberals are so out of touch with what Canadian renters are experiencing that they keep offering half-measures instead of a real action,” Kwan said in a statement.

The NDP is calling on the government to invest more in affordable housing while temporarily preventing for-profit firms from buying designated affordable-housing spaces.

WATCH | Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget: 

Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget

9 hours ago

Duration 11:39

The Liberal government unveiled three new proposals Wednesday to better protect renters in Canada. Power & Politics speaks to Marci Ien, minister of women, gender equality and youth, about the proposed protections.

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