In the spring, as the political campaign season started heating up, the politics team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had an idea: Rather than just listen to candidates and pundits, how about we fan out and listen to Georgia voters?
The plan was to pay monthly visits to five counties in different parts of the state. We decided three should be more or less evenly split. Based on their 2020 vote, we decided on Chatham, Peach and Washington counties. The others we decided would heavily favor either the Democrat (Clayton County) or the Republican (Banks County).
Rather than the rancor, insults and accusations from the candidates and their allies, over the past seven months we discovered that Georgia voters — even in closely divided communities — have gotten along, neighbor to neighbor.
Some have strong opinions, and many are worried about the outcome on Election Day. They believe who occupies the White House for the next four years is important for their community, for good or ill.
In this final installment, the AJC’s Voter Voices team shares the takeaways from spending time in these communities.
Banks County
By Fletcher Page
HOMER — When I entered his hardware store, Daniel Wilson offered me a Coke, a Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pie and an invitation.
“Pull up a chair,” he said during my first visit in April. “Come talk with us.”
The “us” he was referring to was a collection of men who make their way to Homer Hardware a few mornings each week to discuss national politics, local affairs and anything else of interest.
A couple of times while I was there, when someone walked into the store, one of the men would tease, “Here comes a Democrat.” That always drew a denial and laughs.
That’s because hardly anyone in Banks County is a Democrat.
Everybody I encountered during my visits told me they were voting for former President Donald Trump. In Banks County — near the middle point of a drive up I-85 between Atlanta and Greenville, South Carolina — voters haven’t opted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter ran for reelection in 1980.
Martha Ramsey, a retired nurse, started the Banks County Republican Women last year and makes phone calls and house visits campaigning for Trump because she thinks he’s the best candidate to preserve a small town way of life for her family’s future generations.
“That’s the most important thing,” she said, “my grandbabies.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Those who plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris say at times they feel like outsiders. They see Trump as a charlatan who will lie and say anything to get elected.
“Most of them support Trump because they think he’ll let them do what they want to do,” Clifton Ward, a Democrat, told me. “They don’t care about anything else.”
Even those who are softer in their support for Trump couldn’t see voting for a Democrat. That’s because, more than anything, a lot of people I got to know in Banks County want to be left alone. And they believe Democrats are likely to bring the threat of change.
County Commissioner Charles Turk summed it up simply, “We’re a rural county, and we want to keep it that way.”
Page is the AJC’s Athens bureau chief.
Chatham County
By Adam Van Brimmer
SAVANNAH ― The sentiment among Chatham County voters is perhaps best summarized in a satirical campaign yard sign that has sprouted on lawns in recent weeks:
“Giant Meteor 2024: Just End It.”
Over the past seven months, I’ve interviewed a broad swath of Savannah-area voters: Blacks, whites and Latinos; teenagers voting for the first time; elderly voters who recall when Jim Crow laws kept them from the polls; partisan ideologues; and centrists.
Many are apprehensive. The change atop the Democratic ticket, with President Joe Biden ending his run and Harris winning the nomination, has turned a race marked by apathy into one where early voting has set records.
Through the first 14 days of early voting, 69,000 Chatham voters went to the polls and an additional 6,300 had returned absentee ballots. The early in-person voting demand had already surpassed 2020.
The voters I spoke to say the enthusiasm is driven by the contrasts between Harris and Trump. The partisans are rallying even more loudly behind their candidate, while the less committed are no longer talking about sitting out the election.
Turnout is a closely watched factor in Chatham. The county is the state’s most populous outside of metro Atlanta. And while Chatham historically leans Democratic, the electorate has independent tendencies, with Republicans frequently winning countywide races.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for the AJC
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for the AJC
Voters have been contacting groups such as the League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia in search of sample ballots and information on absentee voting and early polling locations since about Labor Day.
“I’m completely burned out but also energized,” said Nina Altschiller of the League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia.
Yet the “Giant Meteor” signs and other satirical placards continue to pop up beside the Halloween decorations. With fears that the election loser will challenge the results and prolong what many have called a “painful” election cycle, the displays speak volumes about the fatigue voters feel.
Van Brimmer is the AJC’s Savannah bureau chief.
Clayton County
By Michelle Baruchman
Will they do it again?
Four years ago, voters in Clayton County showed up in unprecedented numbers to the polls. Compared with the 2016 election, 19,000 more people voted, with the vast majority of those going to Biden.
Clayton is a Democratic stronghold, voting by nearly 85% for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 and about that same rate for Barack Obama in 2012. But it was the high turnout in 2020 that delivered the White House for Democrats.
This year, Democrats are again projecting confidence.
State Rep. Eric Bell, who represents parts of Clayton, knocked on doors for weeks urging voters in his district to show up, and he believes they will “get it done.”
Black residents make up about two-thirds of Clayton’s nearly 300,000 people, and they overwhelmingly vote Democratic.
“We’ll definitely come out,” said Sukari Johnson, who chaired the county’s Democratic Party in 2020. “We were the county to put Biden over.”
Trump’s campaign has been attempting to make inroads with the Black community and with Black men in particular. Harris’ favorability rating among Black respondents in the AJC’s most recent poll is about 74%, lower than the 81% Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock received.
But on the ground, Clayton voters seemed committed to Harris.
In cities such as Forest Park and Lake City, “it takes money to get out the vote,” Johnson said, “and we just haven’t seen that.”
Clayton needs more attention before the election to bring voters out, she said. “You’re talking about people who are making less than $50,000 a year and they’re working two jobs, so it’s a different mentality.”
Mostly, though, voters have been feeling exhausted.
“It feels like the entire country is waiting for the results of a biopsy,” Evan Durham said.
Baruchman is an enterprise reporter for the AJC’s politics team.
Peach County
By Joe Kovac Jr.
BYRON — At a deli in an old drugstore by the railroad tracks in Byron, I met proprietors Sara Jo McLean and her daughter, Vicki McLean.
Their establishment on Main Street, in the heart of town, is an ideological crossroads when it comes to the presidential election.
Most people here see no need to ruffle feathers.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Democrats and Republicans are almost equally represented in Peach County. And locals frequenting the Drugstore Deli are downright civil to each other, whether they support Trump or Harris.
While the climate on cable news outlets and on social media might lead one to believe the country is a powder keg, 83-year-old Sara Jo said: “We don’t hear arguments in here. We don’t see people on the street corner yelling at each other. … It seems that the temperature in this area isn’t on fire.”
That’s not to say some people aren’t feeling the polarization.
A woman I met at the polls in nearby Macon on the first day of early voting told me two men at her Christian retirement home had nearly come to blows over the election.
Another person I spoke to told me she planned to vote for Trump, even though she considered him arrogant and self-centered. Why? She believes cancel culture — when people publicly excoriate or launch boycotts against those with opinions different from their own — wasn’t so rampant when Trump was president.
In the Byron shop where she works, she said, a customer had “gone off” on her when she mentioned that she favored Trump. The customer returned a day or so later and they made up. Friends again. From what I can tell, that’s mostly the way it’s gone in the county. Civility has won.
At the Drugstore Deli, Sara Jo — who was initially pro-Biden and now supports Harris — said, “You can get your point across without being rude.”
Her point: You vote your way, I’ll vote mine and let’s all get along.
Kovac is the AJC’s Macon bureau chief.
Washington County
By Maya T. Prabhu
SANDERSVILLE — Washington County residents say they love the slow pace of their home. That allows them to know their neighbors and look out for each other.
“If someone falls on hard times, it’s nothing to start a GoFundMe and raise $20,000,” Daryl Frost, a Sandersville native, told me. “We take care of each other.”
Politically, residents of this county of around 20,000 about 25 miles west of Macon are ideologically split, with half supporting Democratic candidates and the other half supporting Republicans. That divide mostly falls along racial lines. Black voters typically support Democrats and white voters tend to back Republicans — in state and national politics, at least.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
When it comes to local races, all the county’s partisan elected officials are Democrats, something that has been the case since before Republicans began taking control of state government in 2002.
Voters who said they support Trump admitted they weren’t huge fans of the man but that they were voting for Republican policies. Those same voters said they voted for Democrats in local elections because they are voting for the person, not the party.
Since April, I’ve made several trips to Washington County, spending hours talking to voters about the issues important to them. Most residents don’t talk politics unless asked, but when they are, they have plenty to say.
In May, when I spoke to William Pierce, an octogenarian who has lived in Washington County his entire life, Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee. Now that Harris is at the top of the ticket, Pierce said he knows some people of his generation may not think a woman can run the country. Still, he thinks Harris is up to the job.
“We got this thing about women and being in a top position like that, but there’s a lot of women in top positions now. Like General Motors. (CEO Mary Barra has) done a hell of a good job with General Motors,” Pierce said.
Pierce said he’s hopeful Harris wins what is expected to be a close race.
“I have mixed feelings about it because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “But I’m OK with it, whatever happens. I’ve conceded that whoever wins president, they’ll be president for all of us.”
Prabhu covers the Georgia General Assembly for the AJC’s politics team.
