From 1964 to 2004, Georgia was usually an automatic deposit in the Republican bank account. The only time a Democrat who wasn’t from Georgia carried it was in 1992, and George W. Bush ran away with the state in 2000 and 2004. That changed in 2008. Even though Barack Obama didn’t invest much effort in the Peach State, he only lost to John McCain by six points. The margin widened to eight against Mitt Romney in 2012. That still left a number of Democrats–including yours truly–wondering what might have been.
Well, a new poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reawakened those questions. It shows Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump in a two-way race, 44 percent to 40 percent–just inside the poll’s 4.3 percent margin of error. In a four-way race, Hillary is practically tied with Trump, taking 41 percent to Trump’s 38 percent. Gary Johnson has 11 percent, and Jill Stein has 2 percent.
Looking at the poll’s internals, there’s virtually no good news for Trump in this poll. Hillary is going gangbusters in metro Atlanta. In the core of metro Atlanta, she bests Trump 69-20 in a head-to-head race, and 61-16 with Johnson and Stein included. If you include the Atlanta exurbs, Hillary has 59 percent support in the Atlanta area.
I’m not at all surprised that Hillary seems to be doing well in the Atlanta area. As I noted in 2013 on Daily Kos, Atlanta’s once crimson-red suburbs are slowly, but surely, trending Democratic with an influx of minority voters. Take Cobb and Gwinnett counties, for instance. For years, they were typical of affluent suburban counties in the South–very Republican, with a strong social conservative tint.
However, John McCain only Cobb by eight points in 2008. Romney won it by 12 in 2012, which looks impressive until you consider Bush 43 won it by 25 in 2004. Gwinnett went from a 30-point win for Bush 43 in 2004 to only 12 points for McCain in 2008 and nine for Romney in 2012.
What is even more surprising, though, is that Hillary seems to be doing better than expected in south Georgia. Historically, that area is even more racially polarized than Atlanta. McCain and Romney carried Georgia mainly by running it up in the Macon, Savannah, and Albany suburbs. However, Hillary actually leads 44-34 in southeastern Georgia (Savannah), and the two are tied at 41 apiece in the southwest (Albany and Macon).
Also worth noting–Georgia’s Democrats are coming home in a big way. Hillary has the support of 88 percent of Democrats in a two-way race, and 89 percent in a four-way race. She also leads among independents in a two-way race. It looks like Johnson would harm Trump more than Hillary in a four-way race; he would peel off nine percent of Republicans.
All of this has fueled calls for Hillary to invest into flipping Georgia. For now, though, her campaign has yet to announce plans to target the state. However, this poll amounts to an open invitation for Hillary to take the plunge. I see a lot of parallels with my state of North Carolina in 2008. Both states have large concentrations of blacks and young voters. Due to Obama mounting a massive registration effort and McCain not realizing the danger soon enough, Obama turned North Carolina blue. And as we’ve already seen, Trump is nowhere near as competent a candidate as McCain was.
Granted, a Democrat doesn’t need to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in order to get to 270. However, it is mathematically and politically impossible for a Republican to win without Georgia. Even in a worst-case scenario, Hillary could still get over the top if she won Georgia and Trump succeeded in his windmill-tilting expedition to flip Pennsylvania. Realistically, though, if Hillary wins Georgia, it means that the virtual blue paint has dripped all the way from Maine to Florida–while bypassing South Carolina and possibly West Virginia.
Additionally, if Hillary were to target Georgia, she could literally bleed Trump white. Even if Trump’s fundraising hadn’t been so anemic, he would be spread extremely thin if he were forced to go on the air in the incredibly expensive Atlanta market. As a North Carolinian, that would suit me just fine. Every penny Trump would have to invest in Atlanta is a penny he can’t invest in Charlotte, the Triangle, or the Triad.
Looking at every election since 1992, Georgia and Texas are the only reasons the GOP is still in the game electorally. We already know that Texas is trending purple; its 38 electoral votes will be up for grabs very soon as the state turns more Latino. If Georgia goes purple as well, the GOP would find itself being spread thin in nearly every election. This new poll suggests that day may have come sooner than we all thought.
(featured image courtesy Anish Patel, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
