How Blue will Georgia become?

[Person Man]

It isn’t getting any redder anytime soon.

[Person Man]

I'm going to go against the grain and say I'm not sure. I think Republicans could snag it back by gaining with minorities but the college white vote could get bluer too

Yeah. Depending on just how coalitions shift, it's possible Georgia could be solidly blue by 2028 or could be in play for 3 or 4 more cycles.

I certainly don’t think that Democrats are going to let Georgia become the next Florida, where a red state becomes competitive only for Republicans to win back or at least not unless they really aren’t winning anymore or found a way to compete in Ohio again.

[Person Man]

I agree the Dem ceiling is very high.  IMO its going to be "South Maryland" by the 2030's with just a rump rural R base and Dems routinely clearing 60% in presidential elections.  The demographic trends are even more of a slam dunk than VA 2008-2020, and the Dem base more committed than the VA Dem base.

If this happens, enough migration etc to cause the state become solid Dem, I believe it'll be the first ever example of a US safe state whose governing party is predominantly composed of black people. This is potentially interesting, as in this scenario, it's possible you'll see self-reinforcing trends. State government passes stuff like policing reform, rural white R voters get increasingly disillusioned and move to other states like Florida, potentially causing Republican support to drop even in rural areas of the state, whilst black people elsewhere (e.g. in Alabama) find Georgia an increasingly favourable place to move to. Which could make such a Dem trend in the state even more pronounced.

There's never really been major amounts of white flight on a state level rather than on a city level before, as far as I know, but in theory there's no reason why it couldn't happen, especially given increasing polarization.

Broadly, yes.  In the scenario where GA politics diverges dramatically from the rest of the South (maybe MS goes the same way as GA eventually?), it's reasonable to wonder whether Georgia would eventually become a plurality black state by midcentury.

Trying to imagine what the political coalitions would look like in such a scenario...

 

Do you think Georgia becoming liberal will make other states more conservative?

[Person Man]

I agree the Dem ceiling is very high.  IMO its going to be "South Maryland" by the 2030's with just a rump rural R base and Dems routinely clearing 60% in presidential elections.  The demographic trends are even more of a slam dunk than VA 2008-2020, and the Dem base more committed than the VA Dem base.

If this happens, enough migration etc to cause the state become solid Dem, I believe it'll be the first ever example of a US safe state whose governing party is predominantly composed of black people. This is potentially interesting, as in this scenario, it's possible you'll see self-reinforcing trends. State government passes stuff like policing reform, rural white R voters get increasingly disillusioned and move to other states like Florida, potentially causing Republican support to drop even in rural areas of the state, whilst black people elsewhere (e.g. in Alabama) find Georgia an increasingly favourable place to move to. Which could make such a Dem trend in the state even more pronounced.

There's never really been major amounts of white flight on a state level rather than on a city level before, as far as I know, but in theory there's no reason why it couldn't happen, especially given increasing polarization.

Broadly, yes.  In the scenario where GA politics diverges dramatically from the rest of the South (maybe MS goes the same way as GA eventually?), it's reasonable to wonder whether Georgia would eventually become a plurality black state by midcentury.

Trying to imagine what the political coalitions would look like in such a scenario...

 

Do you think Georgia becoming liberal will make other states more conservative?

Well, in theory there would be some geographic sorting.  At a minimum, I would expect a >60% Dem Georgia makes South Carolina more conservative than it would otherwise be, because Savannah and Augusta are meaningful metros where people can reasonably move across the river to suit their preferences.  There would also be some sorting of GA mountain conservatives into Upstate SC, along with the Chattanooga area of TN, but the numbers might not be as significant.  Ultimately, there's an upper limit to this because Atlanta is centrally located and isn't really commutable from out-of-state.

Similarly, if one of LA or MS decisively flips, I expect the other will quickly get more conservative. 

There's a question of how much the average person cares about politics in determining where to live.  I think it matters somewhat (sometimes really that other preferences are correlated with politics), but there's also the factor that Georgia seems to still be in the public consciousness as a red state.  There was a thread posted here a while back that had polling data of both Republicans and Democrats ranking the states.  Georgia had a much more favorable rating from Republicans than from Democrats, suggesting that Americans still think of Georgia as a "conservative Southern state".  That perception would take time to change, even if it starts to vote Democratic more consistently.  And, as long as that perception is in place, conservatives aren't going to avoid Georgia like they might want to avoid California or Massachusetts.

That's a good point.  Even though I do very much expect the Atlanta metro to eventually vote consistently left of Los Angeles metro, it would take a long time for that to sink in.  People just don't think of Atlanta as being anywhere near as liberal as coastal California.

Even until 2016, many people still considered Colorado a "Republican State" and Missouri a swing state.

[Person Man]

It’ll probably still stay to the right of Virginia, even long term. Probably will vote left of WI/MI/PA by 2028 for sure.

So it will stabilize around where Minnesota or New Hampshire?

[Person Man]

It’ll probably still stay to the right of Virginia, even long term. Probably will vote left of WI/MI/PA by 2028 for sure.

So it will stabilize around where Minnesota or New Hampshire?

I find it hard to believe the GOP would fall below 45% statewide in Georgia, so yes I would say so. Maybe slightly left of NH/MN. I don't see it voting to the left of VA.

VA is D+3 right now. NH + MN are D+2. That seems reasonable. I Republican would have to win the NPV by 4 to win it by maybe 2028 or 2032. Maybe 2024 is the last year Georgia is more Republican than the nation. Maybe by the 2030s, the current paradigm ends and Georgia either snaps back or Republicans collapse in Georgia.

[Person Man]

FWIW, the evidence shows that the Atlanta metro area is still growing in population while the rest of the state is stagnating or declining; if these trends continue, Greater Atlanta *will* constitute a larger proportion of the state's electorate over time. Additionally, the proportion that non-Hispanic whites make up of Georgia's population and electorate are *also* declining, so if there isn't a sizable shift of nonwhites towards Republicans that also indicates there will be a durable shift towards Democrats.

I agree with the comparisons of CO/VA (durable blue shift over time), IL (single metro area dominating), and MD (increasingly significant black vote). Georgia has favorable demographic trends for Democrats (increasingly nonwhite, urban/suburban, and college educated) and very little easy-to-lose white base; this is in contrast to nearby swing state North Carolina, which until recently still had a number of rural conservative Dem voters that propped the party up a bit.

Given the less clear trends with Latino voters in the Southwest, I'd actually be more confident in Georgia turning blue in the medium-term than NV or AZ, even with the high GOP floor.

Sure. I can see Georgia being Minnesota 2.0 (a closish state where Democrats are DOA without) and Arizona and Nevada being Florida 2.0 minus the Cubans. Maybe NV and AZ won’t snap back Republican but they will not be states Democrats can stop campaigning in when they are up 4 points on 538 and 3 points up on RCP two weeks before the election.