Ignore The Hot Takes: Georgia And North Carolina Are Both Purple States

Guest Blogging: Drayton Aldridge

Election 2020 is drawing to a close, and the same pundits who predicted a Biden landslide are churning out their pieces on the momentous Democratic victory in Georgia, as well as the red wave that swept through states like North Carolina. There’s no doubt that Georgia showed up this year, and Democrats across the country owe tremendous gratitude to the efforts of organizers and volunteers throughout the state. 

Carolyn Bordeaux

As of this writing Joe Biden appears poised to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes and turn the state blue for the first time since 1992. Democrats also flipped a suburban Atlanta congressional seat in one of their few pickups of the night (Carolyn Bordeaux in the 7th CD). Georgia may even rescue Democratic hopes of a Senate majority in the January runoff elections. 

Meanwhile North Carolina Democrats once again lost to Donald Trump, blew an eminently winnable Senate race, lost every competitive congressional election, lost crucial judicial races, and came up short in their efforts to flip the state legislature before next year’s redistricting. Particularly due to the ramifications of that last point, Democrats in North Carolina are feeling deeply dispirited as they begin to assess their daunting path forward.

While the wins and losses in both states are very real, the narratives forming around them are mostly hogwash. When all the votes are counted, Georgia will very narrowly go for Biden and North Carolina will very narrowly go for Trump. Results from other statewide races reinforce the fact that both states remain closely divided.

Looking ahead to the future, both states will be central to Democrats’ path to the presidency in the next election, taking the place of traditional swing states like Ohio and Florida that are clearly trending red. North Carolina’s Senate election will be one of the marquee races of the 2022 midterms, as will Georgia’s senate race and gubernatorial election. Both states are highly competitive and changing quickly, yet continue to be dominated by ultra-regressive Republicans who lie, cheat, gerrymander, and vote-suppress their way into power. So far this has worked swimmingly for Republicans and it will continue to work for them until it doesn’t. Take a look at Virginia if you want to know how this story eventually ends.

Republican Congressional Retirements Already Cranking Up Before 2020

Rep. Rob Woodall, 48, a five-termer from the Georgia 7th District (suburbs of Atlanta), has announced he won't be running for reelection in 2020.

Carolyn Bordeaux

Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux came within 433 votes of beating him last November, the closest House race in the nation.

Woodall came into the House in the 2010 Tea Party wave, and we might say he's leaving just ahead of the 2020 Blue Wave.

It looks like Carolyn Bourdeaux has every intention of running for the seat again. She'll have the advantage.

New Hope in the US House: Lucy McBath from Georgia

The can't-get-past-the-Civil-War South fades a little more every year. A black woman will now represent the 6th Congressional District of Georgia.

Not only that. She's a pro-gun-control black woman. Lucy McBath lost her son to gun violence in 2012 because he was playing his music too loudly and "took an attitude." White man shot him. Because the music was too loud. On Tuesday, Lucy McBath won the 6th (admittedly by a thin margin, 50.5%), the very seat in Congress that Newt Gingrich once used to step up on and take a leap into the nation's bloodstream. Lucy McBath.

“Six years ago I went from a Marietta mom to a mother on a mission,” she said.

No mean feat, taking the 6th. It's majority Republican overall (+2 aggregate margin), with Cobb County really Republican. According to them-what-count numbers (FiveThirtyEight), "a Democrat would be expected to lose Georgia 6 by 9.5 percentage points in a neutral national environment (one in which the two parties fought to a tie nationally)."

Some of us thought a Democrat was going to turn the Georgia 6th blue on June 20th, 2017, in the special election that Democrat Jon Ossoff ran in and became a phenomenal fundraising machine but couldn't close the deal. Ossoff got national star attention as part of a building "blue wave," and he got damn close -- 48%. How McBath did it better possibly reflects the Trump Fatigue among suburban Republican women. (Just spit-balling here.)

Have to feel a little sympathy for incumbent Republican Karen Handel, who hasn't served in office but a scant year, and who has a history of close ones that she's usually lost. She lost a Senate bid in 2014, coming in third in a Republican jungle primary. In 2010, she had beaten Nathan Deal in the first round of the Republican jungle primary for Governor but lost to him in the second round by .04 percent of the vote.

But wait, there's another potential Democratic flip in Georgia!

Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux in the 7th District -- Bourdeaux trailed the Republican incumbent by nearly 3,000 votes Wednesday morning. After mail-in absentee ballots got counted, Bourdeaux trailed Woodall by only 890 votes. In Gwinnett County, the heart of the district, there are also 2,400 provisional ballots to be counted. Historically, around 90 percent of the county's provisional ballots are accepted, according to the Gwinnett Elections Director. Provisional ballots tend to be overwhelmingly Democratic votes.

(SOUR NOTE: New voter ID laws in Georgia under Secretary of State Brian Kemp require provisional voters to go in and present identification to a local office.)

Bourdeaux had good company on Tuesday. She was running on the same ticket with seven Democrats who flipped seats in the Gwinnett legislative delegation — five in the Georgia House of Representatives and two in the state Senate.

The election is supposed to be certified next week.