Why did Georgia Democrats remain in power longer than in other Southern States

[OSR stands with Israel]

Georgia Democrats pretty much had the trifecta in GA until 2002 and held both senate senates in the first two years of the Bush Jr admin too. In other southern states, Dems had already lost power in state wide races by the mid-late 90s but in Georgia they remained dominant until 2002.

I dont get why though, GA is more suburban than most southern states and GA Republicans all the way back in 1980 were able to defeat someone as entrenched in GA politics like Talmadge but it seems like they werent able to really build on that success .

[OSR stands with Israel]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

Georgia had both. South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi lacked #1, (Birmingham doesn't go anywhere near as far as Atlanta does, especially because back then basically all its suburbs were Republican and Jefferson County was a swing county), Texas and Tennessee lacked the second half of #1.

Georgia wasn't really that unusual though, Democrats still held up well in Louisiana (which also had both), North Carolina was still a swing state, albeit in a different way than its a swing state today, and Democrats still controlled the state legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee up until 2010, later than Georgia in fact.

I don't even think they even necessarily needed a major city. Little Rock isn't that big, but Democrats were able to stay strong with a Dixiecrat coalition in Arkansas (the last Southern state to fully flip) until 2014.

True overall AR Dems stayed in power longer but GOP still won more statewide offices than they did in GA . 2002-2010 though somehow was a disastrous period for the AR GOP

[OSR stands with Israel]

Let's not forget West Virginia and Kentucky where Democrats held on to at least one house of the legislature in those states until just a few years ago.  

They were never really part of the the Solid South though given that WV was a Republican state from 1864-1928

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Yeah I didn’t say they were great, none of my grandparents ever went to desegregated schools. I just said they weren’t as bad. There was an era around of the turn of the century where it erupted into violence but post WW2, the Atlanta area didn’t have the unrest that the surrounding states had. It was still really segregated but it never quite hit the tipping point the way it did in say Alabama or Mississippi. I wrote a whole paper on this in college.

Sure but it still had worse race problems than states like Texas, Florida, and much of the upper South and those states flipped before Georgia did as well.


It seems like Georgia Democrats in statewide races were able to do really good job in rural areas even after they collapsed elsewhere in those places in the south and this was despite the fact that Suburban Counties such as Gwinnett and Cobb were Titanium Republican even in the 90s (it wasnt just from 2002-2014 where that was the case)

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Alabama literally had George Wallace.

and Georgia had Herman Talmadge who was worse than Wallace, Sparkman , Hill or Allan and Massox was arguably just as bad as Wallace

[OSR stands with Israel]

I reject your premise that GA was substantially more suburban than other Southern states during the 1990s/2000s.  GA is less urban than many Southern states where Democrats did lose significant ground in 1990s (i.e. TX, VA, FL, etc.).  Georgia stayed Democrat longer because it was more rural than these states.

Georgia was 63.2% urban in 1990, 71.6% in 2000.  For comparison:

Florida was 84.8% urban in 1990, 89.3% in 2000.
Louisiana was 68.1% urban in 1990, 72.6% in 2000.
Virginia was 69.4% urban in 1990, 73.0% in 2000.
Texas was 80.3% urban in 1990, 82.5% in 2000.

What about Alabama though were Democrats started to get whooped in state wide elections beginning in 1994