Flipped back: Trump recaptures Georgia four years after losing the battleground state

Harris fought hard for Georgia, too, concentrating most of her stops in the heavily Democratic metro Atlanta area. Her campaign hired hundreds of staffers and enlisted legions of volunteers who reported knocking on more than 250,000 doors in the final days of the race.

The former president drove up vote totals in Republican strongholds across the state, overwhelming Harris’ base of support in metro Atlanta and other urban and suburban pockets in her history-making bid to become the nation’s first female president.

John Spink

John Spink

He kept together a GOP coalition that frayed in 2020, when Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia invigorated Democrats who hadn’t carried the state since Bill Clinton eked out a win here in 1992.

Trump’s loss then set the stage for more Republican defeats. Only nine weeks later, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock scored upset wins in 2021 runoffs that gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

A vindictive Trump, meanwhile, obsessively blamed Kemp and other Republicans for not doing enough to help him. Trump’s demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to overcome his defeat later formed the basis of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ still-pending election interference case.

This election, Trump struck an uneasy truce with Kemp a few weeks after he renewed his attack on the governor, and he mostly ignored other state Republican figures he accused of disloyalty. Kemp, too, deployed his political machine to help the GOP nominee and appeared with him in Augusta.

“Republicans in a lot of ways have been the bigger people and more willing to let bygones be bygones and just do whatever it takes to win,” Kemp said in an interview about his alliance with Trump.

The victory dashes the hopes of Democrats who had been making gains in Georgia since Trump’s 2016 win. While the Republican easily carried the state in that election, he lost a trio of suburban counties that are now pillars of the Democratic base.

arvin.temkar@ajc.com

arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Since then, Democrats have made steady inroads by forging an alliance of liberal white voters, Black voters and swing voters who once regularly backed Republicans. The latter group of split-ticket voters was decisive in Democratic wins in recent elections.

Harris and her Georgia allies were desperate to piece back together that jumbled coalition, but polls showed a sizable number of independent voters broke toward Trump, who consolidated much of his party’s base even before winning the nomination.

The outcome is sure to shape Georgia’s politics beyond November, as up-and-coming candidates maneuver for elections in 2026. Ossoff stands for another term that year, and the governor’s job and other statewide offices will be on the ballot.

The voting across Georgia was marred by bomb threats targeting several metro Atlanta counties where Democrats typically dominate. Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, said several of the hoax threats originated in Russia.

Hyosub Shin/AJC

Hyosub Shin/AJC

The election caps an unprecedented campaign shaped by election interference charges against a defiant Trump in Fulton County, a felony conviction in New York, two apparent assassination attempts, and a blizzard of controversial and divisive statements that might have doomed any other contender.

Democrats had their own drama as party leaders forced Biden off the ticket in July after his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, a stunning withdrawal that put Harris in the running to be the first woman elected president in U.S. history.

Biden’s decision instantly reset the matchup between Trump, who has run for president for much of the past decade, against Harris, who only became the party’s nominee about four months ago. Polls in Georgia soon tightened, as Democrats once dreading the race rallied behind Harris.

The 60-year-old Democrat mostly declined to lean into the history-making nature of her campaign, instead casting it as a generational shift away from Trump, who at 78 presented an increasingly dark vision of a nation under siege by illegal immigration and veering toward another global war.

At his Georgia rallies, Trump told audiences that entire communities had been “occupied” by people in the U.S. illegally and said his election would bring a “liberation day.” He made sweeping promises to end foreign wars and impose stiff tariffs. His closing message was marked by his trademark bombast: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

But often his policy pronouncements were overshadowed by bizarre statements, rambling digressions and bellicose threats against the media and his political rivals. He spread falsehoods that the 2020 election was “rigged” and infuriated his Georgia supporters by renewing attacks against Kemp, whom he called a “bad guy” and “disloyal” at an Atlanta rally.

Harris, meanwhile, built her case for election around being a consensus-seeking candidate who campaigned with a “politics of joy” mindset. She pledged to preserve abortion rights after Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and painted the Republican as a threat to democracy.

The surging turnout in the race helped make Georgia a toss-up. More than 4 million Georgians cast ballots before Election Day, encouraged by both campaigns to bank their votes early. The candidates made more than a dozen visits to Georgia in the final weeks of the race, trying to turn out voters.

The attention and the crush of spending — the campaigns spent more than $300 million to woo Georgia voters — reinforced the state’s standing as one of the most competitive in the nation.

Before 2020, Georgians were long used to being overlooked. Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney easily captured Georgia in their races against Barack Obama, and Trump’s 2016 win came without a single visit from either presidential candidate in the final stretch.

With Tuesday’s vote, neglect from the campaigns is no longer a problem.