Almanac of American Politics Profile
For many years Georgia seemed to vote against General Sherman, shunning Republican presidential candidates even when states less ravaged by Sherman’s troops, like next-door South Carolina and Alabama, embraced them. It was the second most Democratic state for John Kennedy in 1960, voted for opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George Wallace in 1968), delivered big margins for Jimmy Carter in both 1976 and 1980 and voted heavily Republican only in 1972, 1984 and 1988. A residual anti-Sherman vote in rural Georgia can perhaps explain why Bill Clinton carried the state outside metro Atlanta in 1992 and lost it by only 2 percent in 1996. But no more. George W. Bush carried Georgia by wide margins and the half of the state outside metro Atlanta by even wider margins in 2000 and 2004. It will take a major shift of opinion to make Democrats competitive for Georgia’s electoral votes again.
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Georgia’s presidential primary comes early in the cycle and has been of some importance. In 1992 Governor Zell Miller had it scheduled one week before Super Tuesday in order to help Clinton, and it did: Clinton won solidly to balance losses in Maryland and Colorado the same day. In 1996 and 2000, Georgia was of little importance except as a measure of turnout: Democratic turnout fell from 622,000 in 1988 to 284,000 in 2000, while Republican turnout rose from 400,000 to 643,000. In the March 2, 2004, primary Democratic turnout zoomed to 627,000, as there was no Republican contest. John Edwards visited Georgia five times after the Iowa caucuses and John Kerry only once, but Kerry beat Edwards 47 percent-41 percent. Edwards carried white voters and won 101 of the 159 counties, but Kerry carried black voters and carried Atlanta's Fulton County and the two other majority-black counties in the Atlanta metro area by 47,000 votes—more than his 33,000-vote statewide plurality. Edwards’s loss here made it plain that he had no chance to win the nomination and would be hard pressed to win other Southern states, and he withdrew from the race. For 2008, Georgia has moved up its primary to February 5. But even though it’s now the ninth largest state, it’s not clear it will get much attention. In early 2007, well-known Republican politicians were lining up behind Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain; there appeared to be less activity on the Democratic side.
