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
Alabama's numbers are weird because it goes from 60.4% urban in 1990, to 55.4% urban in 2000 (I'm attributing this mainly to White flight from JeffCo to exurban Shelby/Tuscaloosa/Walker Counties during the 1990s). Comparing the 1990 numbers, AL and GA are actually pretty close (60.4% and 63.2% respectively).
OSR, I would encourage you not get too bogged-down in the weeds here. Talking about the relative urbanities of Southern states during the 1990s is probably too much of an over-analysis, even.
We're dealing with extremely small samples here. 2-3 election cycles in 8-9 states. The effects of incumbency, candidate quality, and other locally-idiosyncratic factors are way too pronounced in such a small sample to identify any kind of underlying trend.
