As for gerrymandering the state legislature- Georgia isn’t Wisconsin. If the northern suburbs continue to go left, there isn’t any feasible way for the Republicans to hang onto the state legislature once the Dems start winning the PV by more than a few points.
Don't know definitively, but I suspect it's possible to do so by diluting suburban votes by surrounding them by safely Republican rural ones. For example, a district might be 60-40% rural, and even if it trends leftward, it will remain Republican.
If you don't know definitively, then it's probably best to avoid arguing with someone who does know what he's talking about. What you're describing here is a pack and crack, which is the basic principle of gerrymandering. I would imagine that every single poster on this board is familiar with it. The issue here and the argument being made is that this will be difficult to accomplish for Republicans in Georgia, because so many of the state's Democratic voters are in the Atlanta metropolitan area and because the periphery of the metropolitan area is swinging Democratic faster than anywhere else in the country.
Right, that strategy is theoretically possible for
congressional maps as you could extend districts all the way up to the border with Tennessee.
But for state legislature maps it just isn’t doable thanks to how much smaller the districts are and how fast the area’s swinging, unless you literally want tens of really thin north-south strips going all the way from the northern border to the Atlanta suburbs, which would be entirely unprecedented and would likely upset a lot of people.
And also a real reason why GA is trending blue is because the black population is increasing in the state in a reverse great migration. Most former NYC, LA, (some) Chicago black folks who left those cities are moving to the ATL area.
You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if this trend speeds up once Georgia as a whole flips blue at the governor/state legislature level, and in the end Georgia might even become black-majority in a few decades.