5 counties in Georgia to watch on election night
The counties that will decide who wins Georgia
Georgia is coming down to the wire as we are now in the final week of the 2024 election: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain locked in a tight battle for 16 electoral votes in a state that could very well determine which one of them will be taking the presidential oath of office in January.
Georgia, as we’ve discussed before, has quite a lot of counties. Now is a great time to highlight the 5 that I believe will determine who carries the state.
1. Gwinnett
-2020 President: Biden 58%, Trump 40%
-2016 President: Clinton 50%, Trump 44%
-2012 President: Obama 45%, Romney 54%
Just a decade ago, the suburban county was a reliable part of the Republican coalition. But its surging population has resulted in a shift in political dynamics: It marginally supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump four years after backing Mitt Romney.
Joe Biden’s historically strong showing here in 2020 lifted him to a narrow victory in the state. But will Kamala Harris be able to replicate — or perhaps build on his gains? Or will concerns about immigration and the economy bring some of these voters back into the Republican fold?
Gwinnett is part of a trio of suburban Atlanta-area counties that flipped from supporting Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton, along with Cobb and Henry.
2. Clayton
-2020 President: Biden 85%, Trump 14%
-2016 President: Clinton 84%, Trump 14%
-2012 President: Obama 85%, Romney 15%
One of the core counties of the Atlanta metro area, Clayton could give us some early clues about enthusiasm (or lack thereof) among Black voters.
African-Americans alone account for nearly seven in ten voters in Clayton, which houses Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. It routinely supports Democratic presidential and statewide candidates by large margins — Biden received 84 percent of the vote here — making it the bluest county across any of the swing states.
Nobody is expecting Donald Trump to do well here. But one of the biggest headlines of the campaign has been the Harris team’s outreach to key parts of the Democratic base. If turnout is lagging in Clayton and similar counties with high Black populations (like nearby DeKalb), it could spell trouble for Harris nationally.
3. Fayette
-2020 President: Biden 46%, Trump 53%
-2016 President: Clinton 38%, Trump 57%
-2012 President: Obama 34%, Romney 65%
One of the more impressive aspects of Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia: he didn’t flip a single county won by Donald Trump in the last election. But Atlanta-adjacent Fayette County presents Kamala Harris with perhaps her best chance in the state to flip a county that previously voted Republican for President.
Democrats have chipped away at Republican dominance in Fayette County over the years, thanks to an influx of residents seeking to escape the rising costs of living in the city. Just four years after winning the county by nearly 20 percentage points, Trump would see his margin reduced to single digits. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) fell just a few hundred votes short of carrying the county in his 2022 re-election for a full term.
If Kamala Harris manages to flip Fayette, she’s likely doing what she would need to do in order to win statewide. At the very least, she can’t afford to run behind Biden’s showing here.
4. Hall
-2020 President: Biden 28%, Trump 71%
-2016 President: Clinton 23%, Trump 73%
-2012 President: Obama 21%, Romney 77%
If “Trump Country” had a capital in Georgia, Hall County would be a top contender. Once a key part of the Democratic Party’s Solid South blueprint, Hall voted Republican for President in 1984 and hasn’t looked back since.
These days, the exurban county — home to Lake Lanier, is one of Trump’s biggest and best counties in the state. Any hopes of recapturing Georgia will require huge turnout in Hall and other ruby-red North Georgia counties.
In 2020, Trump fared slightly worse in Hall compared to four years prior and ended up falling short statewide. But Republicans are hoping that their supporters, much like Trump himself, will come to embrace different methods of voting this time around instead of waiting until election day. They also believe that Republican voters in counties like this are more likely to turnout for a presidential election.
5. Chatham
-2020 President: Biden 58%, Trump 40%
-2016 President: Clinton 55%, Trump 40%
-2012 President: Obama 55%, Romney 43%
With Savannah as its main anchor, Chatham County is like a blue dot in a red sea. It is one of the few Democratic pockets in the state’s heavily Republican southern region. It’s also the largest urbanized county in the state outside Atlanta.
Chatham has supported every Democratic nominee for president since 2004 — each time by a greater margin than in the previous election. In fact, Biden’s showing in this coastal county was stronger than favorite son Jimmy Carter’s performance from 1976.
Atlanta and its surrounding counties account for the majority of the statewide vote. But in order to compete with Trump’s strength in rural Georgia, Harris will need to tap into voters Chatham and other mid-sized counties with urban centers (like Macon-Bibb and Augusta-Richmond), as these counties tend to have sizable populations of Black voters.
Other counties to watch
(2012 → 2016 → 2020 presidential results)
-Burke (D+11 → D+2 → R+2)
-Washington (D+8 → D+1 → D+1)
-Forsyth (R+63 → R+47 → R+33)
-Columbia (R+43 → R+37 → R+26)
-Baldwin (D+6 → D+2 → D+1)
-Sumter (D+8 → D+2 → D+5)