ATLANTA — Georgia had among the tightest margins of any swing state in 2020. That year, Joe Biden won the Peach State by 11,779 votes, the first Democrat to capture Georgia’s electoral votes since 1992.
Since then, Georgia voters re-elected a Republican governor and Democratic U.S. Senator in 2022. Polls suggest Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are locked in a tight race and both campaigns have devoted significant resources to winning the state.
Harris is campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday and Trump has a rally scheduled near Macon on Sunday.
While Georgia had been a Republican stronghold since the early 2000s, this Sun Belt state has been growing in population and diversity, especially in the suburbs around Atlanta.
In a state decided recently by such small margins, subtle shifts among any demographic can matter. And of course, no demographic is a monolith — political diversity certainly exists within races, classes and geographies. But here are five groups of voters to watch who will be key in determining who wins Georgia — and possibly the presidency.
Suburban women
Atlanta’s suburbs have been a key driver of the political shifts in Georgia over the last decade. As they have gained population and become more diverse, many suburban communities that have historically been deep red have become more purple.
In Atlanta’s northern suburbs, home to many well-off, highly educated voters, the Trump presidency and the overturning of Roe v. Wade accelerated flight from the Republican Party.
On the town green in Alpharetta, which is decorated with scarecrows for Halloween, friends Emily Lillystone and Shawna Goelz both say they are not thrilled with their choices for president.
Both identify as political independents, support abortion rights and believe Republicans would be better for their family finances. Both voted for Biden in 2020. But this year, they came to different conclusions in the presidential race. Lillystone is voting for Harris; Goelz for Trump, even though she thinks he is “morally awful.”
“I don’t think as a woman I want the government involved in what I’m deciding to do with my body and nor do I want that for my daughters,” says Lillystone.
Georgia law bans most abortions after roughly six weeks. The law took effect after the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“I completely agree with everything Emily said,” Goelz says. “However, I feel like my safety walking down the street to get a soda is more important than whether or not my daughter can have an abortion.”
FBI data shows violent crime fell nationwide in 2023, including in Atlanta, but many Americans still report feeling unsafe and crime has been a keystone of Republican campaign messaging.
Atlanta’s suburbs helped propel Biden’s win in 2020. During the midterms that followed, they were home to many of the tens of thousands of voters who split their tickets between Democrat Raphael Warnock for U.S. Senate and Republican Brian Kemp for governor.
Young voters
Voters ages 18-29 account for roughly 21% of registered voters in Georgia. The relatively young population is one reason CIRCLE, the Tufts University research center focused on young voters, ranks Georgia among the top states where young voters can play a key role in the election.
However, CIRCLE also found voter registration among 18-29 year-olds in Georgia is down 8% from 2020.
Millennial and Gen Z voters regularly cite housing affordability and student loan relief as top issues driving their vote. For Sydney Craddock, a first-year biology major at Spelman College in Atlanta, she is thinking most about reproductive rights and the chance to elect the first woman to the White House.
“This is probably one of the biggest elections we’ve had so far,” Craddock says. “As an African American woman, to have someone like that in a position of power as president, is crazy to me. Little Black girls, we didn’t see people in those positions that look like us.”
Like other age groups, there is also a gender gap between Harris and Trump among young voters. The most recent Harvard Youth Poll Survey found that young women favor Harris over Trump by 30 points, compared to 10 points for young men. The Trump campaign sees young men as prime targets for outreach.
Jackson Anderson, an 18-year-old trade school student from Newnan, Ga. studying construction management, is voting for the first time this fall and says Trump represents the kind of toughness he wants to see in a president.
“I know he’s a fighter,” Anderson says, waiting in line for a recent Trump rally in Atlanta. “As we saw, July 13th, he got shot and raised his fist in the air, and he said, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ I know he cares about this country. He doesn’t give up.”
Black men
Black voters make up roughly 30% of registered voters in Georgia – the highest proportion of any swing state. Black women are the most reliable Democratic voting powerhouse, with Black men not far behind, but some polls have suggested softening support for Democrats among Black men.
Eric Alston is a regular at Cascade Skating Rink in Atlanta. On a recent Wednesday night, Alston was lacing up his rollerskates when R&B star Usher showed up for a get out the vote event.
Alston says he wishes he had other choices for president. He says Trump and Harris are neither all good or all bad in his eyes. Earlier in the campaign, he did not totally rule out voting for either of them. At 61, protecting social security and ensuring it keeps pace with inflation is a priority for him.
“For our older members of the country that served in the military, worked jobs, kept communities going and raised families, now they’re reaching a point where they’re not going to receive the help they paid into a system to receive,” Alston says.
Despite reservations about both candidates, Alston says he would never skip an election, noting he was born before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Oh I’m definitely not going to stay at home,” Alston says. “A no-vote is unfathomable from where I come from. I was born without all my rights. There is no way I would abdicate exercising such an important responsibility as a citizen.”
Even though Alston did have some openness to Trump, he says in the end, he cannot get over how he conducted himself in office.
An October NAACP poll of registered voters found that the likelihood of Black men under 50 voting for Trump decreased to 21%, down from 27% in August.
Shaquille Booker, 28, an Atlanta artist and kickboxer also skating at Cascade, said earlier this month he had not done much research about the election, but he planned to. Undecided between Harris and Trump, Booker says he usually votes, but did not in 2020. Lowering taxes and making it easier to start a small business, he says, would most directly impact his life.
“I care about fair treatment and equal job opportunities,” Booker says.
Asian American/Pacific Islander and Latinos
University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock has a rule of thumb that for Democrats to win Georgia: they have to capture 30% of white voters and Black voters have to comprise 30% of the voters who cast ballots. But Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie says that rule may need a slight update, as Asian Americans and Latinos become a larger share of the electorate.
Judy Zhu and Wei Kang Ding are voting in their first presidential election, after casting their first ballots in the 2022 midterms once they became U.S. citizens. They have been taking their vote very seriously, watching debates and researching the platforms of the candidates and political parties.
Zhu says they have friends in their community across the political spectrum, from strong Trump or Harris supporters to undecided voters and those who are just plain fed up. For Zhu, the economy, healthcare and democracy are driving her vote.
“I think I have definitely changed my mind a couple of times before I finally decided who to vote for,” Zhu says. While she did not want to share publicly who she landed on, she did say her and her husband did not vote for the same presidential candidate.
Georgia’s AAPI population grew by 48% between 2012 and 2022, according to the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta. Indian Americans, Korean Americans and Chinese Americans comprise the largest AAPI communities in Georgia.
The AAPI turnout rate has lagged behind white and Black voters, but participation is increasing.
According to AAJA, the AAPI turnout rate increased by 7% between 2018 and 2022 midterm elections.
Reading a comic book at the Peachy Corners Cafe, which serves bubble tea and Vietnamese coffee, Tha Vin says this election felt so important, he gathered his whole family to go to the polls together.
As a former refugee who came to the U.S. from Cambodia in 1980, Vin says the language some Republicans, including Trump, are using to describe immigrants is shaping his vote.
“I’m a gun owner, like I find I want to vote Republican,” Vin said. “But the rhetoric toward immigrants has been something that has made me not want to vote Republican.”
Like Georgia’s AAPI community, the Latino electorate is also growing. The state’s Latino eligible voter population quadrupled since 2000, according to the Latino Data Hub at UCLA. Latinos now account about 4.6% of registered voters in Georgia.
While both Latino and AAPI voters skew heavily Democratic, these groups are not homogenous and have diversity in voting preferences. Republicans think they can make up ground with some of these voters.
Daniela Usurin, who came to the U.S. from Uruguay 54 years ago, is voting for Trump because of his pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, which she says hurts people who came to the U.S. legally like her. She is also concerned by inflation.
“The prices of food and gas, they’re just getting way too high,” Usurin says. “I’m retired. I’m glad that I have a pension in addition to social security, otherwise I couldn’t make it.”
Voters outside metro Atlanta
Harris and Trump have held most of their rallies this year in vote-rich Metro Atlanta, home to the state’s Democratic engine and also to the independent-minded suburban voters both parties need to reach.
But to win, Republicans need to juice turnout in barn-red counties, activating low-propensity voters who have become engaged in politics because of Trump. Democrats need to cut into Republican margins in pockets of the state outside Atlanta, believing they can lose by less in rural counties and smaller metros.
One way Democrats are doing this is by engaging rural Black voters who historically have not received much attention from campaigns. Democratic candidates like Stacey Abrams and U.S. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock pursued this approach in recent campaigns.
At a campaign rally with former President Bill Clinton in Columbus, Heather Smith says the attention is an encouraging sign. Smith lives in nearby Harris County, which hugs the Alabama border and remembers Clinton campaigning in Columbus in 1992, the year she turned 18.
“People are just out here working and doing their thing and they really don’t want to watch the news anymore,” Smith says. “So face to face contact is going to be the difference.”
Across the state, outside Augusta, Trump won Columbia County with 66% of the vote in 2016. He won it by four points less in 2020.
Columbia County resident Jennifer Michael supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the GOP primary. When Haley dropped out of the race, Michael was devastated, but not surprised.
Since then, she has struggled with how to vote and Michael says her analysis “only changed a little bit,” when Biden stepped aside.
“There’s been just so much turmoil and honestly I had an overarching feeling of dread,” she says. “There’s no other way to say it. It just wasn’t pretty.”
Michael, who is retired, says she cares about preserving Medicare and Social Security. She also supports abortion rights and has concerns about the border, but is hopeful Harris means it when she talks about signing the bipartisan border bill that stalled earlier this year. She says lately she has had to focus on cleaning up damage from Hurricane Helene, but has been trying to learn more about Harris.
“To see if she was somebody I could either be happy voting for, be okay voting for, or one of those where you hold your nose and you vote anyway,” Michael says. “I still don’t know. It will not be Trump. I can be 1000% sure it will not be him. Another Trump presidency scares the bejesus out of me.”
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