As the election results were being reported during 2020, it became obvious that Trump was outperforming his expectations across the board, and the election was going to be very close. However, this was only a half truth in one place; the Peach State. While the election in Georgia was very close, it was one of the only states in the country where Biden didn’t significantly run under his polling. But why?

As has been demonstrated many times now, the newest iteration of the GOP isn’t very popular amongst educated voters. Whether it includes Mark Robinson telling women to be “responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” Kari Lake saying that abortion is “the ultimate sin,” or Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene wanting a “legal agreement” to “separate states,” it should be no secret that educated voters are trending left. 

The same reasons that educated voters are trending left are the same reasons suburban Georgia is trending left. In Georgia, 46% of people in the suburbs have a college degree of associates and above, much higher than the national average of 37%. It should then be no secret that the suburbs in Georgia shifted from Trump+2 in 2016 to Biden+6.5 in 2020, a gargantuan shift that came close to single handedly flipping the Peach State.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t touch on the other elephant in the room. Minority migration to the entire state of Georgia has been a major contributor to Georgia’s swing to the left. In 2010, the Voting Age Population of the suburbs in Georgia was 57% White, and in 2020, it was down to 46%. This is a gargantuan shift of 11%, and it’s not easily explained away by internal migration. Contrary to popular belief, the rural parts of Georgia actually got less white in this same time span, going from 77% to 75% white. It’s also not explainable by migration from the urban cores to the suburbs; the same pattern of minority migration applies to urban Georgia as well, with urban Georgia going from 39% white to 36% white.

Well then, what is it? There’s only one possible answer, and it’s one that’s been proven; out of state migration. An influx of out of state minorities and educated white people, combined with pre-existing shifts among educated voters from the Peach State, all culminated in 2020 in what was truly The Perfect Storm. Georgia swung left, going from Trump+5 in 2016 to an extremely narrow Biden win in 2020, the first Democratic victory in Georgia on the presidential level since 1992. The swing between 2016 and 2020 in Georgia was more than a 5 point swing left, the largest among any competitive state in the country.

This all goes full circle to the central point. Is such a large swing left sustainable in 2024? The short answer is that it’s very unlikely. While Georgia swinging left is somewhat of a precondition to Harris winning the state because of how close the state was in 2020, it’s very unlikely a more than 5 point swing left is repeated. Why is that, given The Perfect Storm that was previously described in this article?

Well, the answer lies in the largest area of Georgia, and the one area of Georgia that people don’t like to talk about; rural Georgia. While rural Georgia technically swung left from 2016 to 2020, the swing wasn’t that much; it was less than half of a percentage point, and Trump netted 200,000 more votes in rural Georgia! Additionally, only 28% of rural Georgia has an associates degree or above, which is much lower than the national average of 37%. This manifested itself in 2022, when every GOP statewide candidate saw a large boost in rural Georgia, one with a weak correlation to black turnout. This even applied, albeit to a much lesser extent, to GOP candidate for Senate Herschel Walker, despite his pitiful performance.

Astute observers have probably put two and two together, and realized that rural Georgia might not be significant due to rural areas generally being depopulated. Even though rural Georgia is only 22% of the population of Georgia, it’s still extremely significant. In 2022, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock came 2 points away from losing the general election due to a weak showing in the northern suburbs and a swing against him in rural Georgia. Rural Georgia might not be enough to doom any Democratic candidate in Georgia on their own, but if a Democrat underperforms in suburban or urban Georgia, rural Georgia is a nail in the coffin. And if election results after 2020 are any indication, a 5 point swing left in both the white and black areas of suburban Georgia can be overwhelmed by just rural Georgia alone.