After many years, victory in Georgia could finally be within the Democratic Party’s grasp

With only a day left to vote in Georgia’s two U.S. Sen­ate runoffs, the two Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers hold slim leads over the Repub­li­can incumbents.

Accord­ing to FiveThirtyEight’s analy­sis of recent polls, Jon Ossoff leads Sen­a­tor David Pur­due (who won his seat in 2014 by 8%) by 1.4%, while Rev­erend Raphael Warnock leads Kel­ly Loef­fler (who was appoint­ed to her role last year) by 2%. While both these fig­ures are well with­in the mar­gin of error, it is star­tling that the avail­able body of pub­lic opin­ion research shows these races being this tight giv­en that Geor­gia has been con­sid­ered a solid­ly Repub­li­can state for decades.

How did the Democ­rats come so far in the Peach State?

Undoubt­ed­ly, the can­di­dates in this elec­tion are part of the equation.

Repub­li­can mem­bers of the U.S. Sen­ate have come under fire – from Democ­rats and a num­ber of right-wing fig­ures, includ­ing Don­ald Trump – for stalling repeat­ed efforts to get finan­cial aid to mil­lions of Americans.

This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad look for Georgia’s two U.S. Sen­a­tors, both mul­ti-mil­lion­aires who have spent more time using their posi­tions to enrich them­selves (pos­si­bly ille­gal­ly) than try­ing to help their con­stituents sur­vive the pandemic.

Mean­while, the Democ­rats are field­ing two excel­lent candidates.

Loef­fler is faced by Raphael Warnock, the pas­tor of a his­toric Black church in Atlanta who has been able to buck old stereo­types about African Amer­i­can men (despite his opponent’s best efforts) and run a cam­paign focused on pol­i­cy issues – and pup­pies! David Per­due is being chal­lenged by Jon Ossoff, the thir­ty-three-year-old jour­nal­ist and for­mer can­di­date for Georgia’s 6th U.S. House District.

Ossoff has ham­mered Per­due over his lack of com­mit­ment to help­ing ordi­nary Geor­gians dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, while gal­va­niz­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic base with his com­mit­ment to civ­il rights.

How­ev­er, 2020 was hard­ly the first year that Democ­rats have field­ed tal­ent­ed can­di­dates for statewide posi­tions – and cer­tain­ly not the first year that the Repub­li­cans have field­ed cor­rupt, racist politicians.

The real sto­ry behind the close­ness of this race has been unfold­ing over many years, and includes two major fac­tors: shift­ing demo­graph­ics, and her­culean efforts on the part of on-the-ground organizers.

Demo­graph­ics is destiny?

Geor­gia has under­gone rad­i­cal change in recent years; the pop­u­la­tion has become younger, more racial­ly diverse, and more urban. The main engine of this change has been the cap­i­tal city of Atlanta, where the boom­ing tech and enter­tain­ment indus­tries have turned the city into an eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al cen­ter – and made it one of the fastest-grow­ing metro areas in the entire coun­try. Young pro­fes­sion­als (espe­cial­ly African-Amer­i­­cans) have spent recent years flock­ing to the city, not only from Georgia’s rapid­ly depop­u­lat­ing rur­al areas, but from across the nation.

How­ev­er, Geor­gia is not the only state under­go­ing demo­graph­ic change and pop­u­la­tion move­ment, and it hasn’t always spelled good news for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. In Texas sim­i­lar demo­graph­ic trends encour­aged pro­gres­sive hopes in 2020 – only for Trump to win by 5.5% and Sen­a­tor John Cornyn to trounce his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger by 10%. Demo­graph­ic changes in oth­er states, such as Alaba­ma and North Car­oli­na, have not trans­lat­ed into Demo­c­ra­t­ic surges.

So what makes Georgia’s Democ­rats so special?

Sow­ing and reaping

The biggest fac­tor in the Democ­rats’ progress in Geor­gia has been a net­work of activists and orga­niz­ers who have spent years reg­is­ter­ing and empow­er­ing new vot­ers – despite heavy resis­tance from the state’s Repub­li­can establishment.

With­out a doubt, the most famous of these orga­niz­ers is Stacey Abrams.

Abrams is a polit­i­cal phe­nom­e­non in her own right; a ten-year vet­er­an of the State House, she came with­in a hair’s breadth of becom­ing Georgia’s gov­er­nor in 2018 and was recent­ly con­sid­ered as a run­ning mate for Joe Biden.

Abrams blamed her 2018 defeat on the bla­tant use of vot­er sup­pres­sion by her oppo­nent, then-Sec­re­­tary of State Bri­an Kemp, and has spent the past two years chal­leng­ing the state’s dis­en­fran­chise­ment of its Black, poor, and urban pop­u­la­tion through a vari­ety of orga­ni­za­tions under the umbrel­la of Fair Fight Action.

Abrams has a genius for the work: State Sen­a­tor Jen Jor­dan cred­it­ed her with see­ing the advan­tages of demo­graph­ic changes before any­one else, while for­mer guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Jason Carter has argued that she “built the infra­struc­ture” that allowed Joe Biden to eke out vic­to­ry in the state’s pres­i­den­tial election.

How­ev­er, Abrams is not the only per­son mov­ing the nee­dle, as she would be the first to admit. Besides the orga­ni­za­tions that Abrams leads, there are a pletho­ra of groups mobi­liz­ing vot­ers, with dif­fer­ent areas of expertise.

The New Geor­gia Project – which was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by Abrams and is now run by her pro­tégée Nse Ufot – began as an effort to help poor Geor­gians take advan­tage of the Afford­able Care Act but quick­ly trans­formed into an effort to enfran­chise these vot­ers. The suc­cess of the NGP can be mea­sured in how fierce­ly the Geor­gia estab­lish­ment have opposed them; two Repub­li­can sec­re­taries of state have lev­eled spu­ri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions and law­suits against the group (which failed to find any wrongdoing).

Anoth­er vot­er reg­is­tra­tion group, Black Vot­ers Mat­ter, is deter­mined to empow­er Georgia’s most dis­en­fran­chised pop­u­la­tion – African Americans.

Led by their ener­getic founder LaTosha Brown, the group encour­ages Black vot­ers to grasp “the pow­er that they have and deserve”.

Togeth­er, these groups have knocked on mil­lions of doors, called mil­lions of phones, and spent mil­lions of dol­lars in adver­tis­ing to help expand the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly though, Georgia’s orga­niz­ers have devel­oped inno­v­a­tive tech­niques for find­ing and engag­ing new voters.

The New Geor­gia Project’s vol­un­teers have knocked on over five mil­lion doors, but have com­ple­ment­ed their work with social wel­fare efforts like toy and food dri­ves in poor areas. Mean­while, orga­niz­er Sta­cy Efrat dis­cov­ered an “untapped gold mine” of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers by focus­ing on the sub­ur­ban apart­ment com­plex­es where many new­com­ers to the state live (they offer bet­ter rent prices than one-fam­i­­ly homes in the same areas).

All of this effort by orga­niz­ers seems to have paid off. Geor­gia has seen record-break­ing ear­ly vot­ing for a runoff elec­tion, with over three mil­lion votes already cast. 114,000 of these ear­ly votes have been cast by vot­ers who didn’t vote in the gen­er­al elec­tion. As huge as the num­bers already are, activists’ ambi­tions are even larg­er. “It’s unheard of to turn out more peo­ple in a runoff than the gen­er­al elec­tion,” says vet­er­an orga­niz­er Feli­cia Davis, “but we are going to do it.”