If history is the best indicator of the future, Georgia Republicans’ triumph with their election reforms being signed into law this week may only be a temporary victory, according to a top editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
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Dave Wasserman, the House editor of the political newsletter, said on Friday that Republican dominance in the state, already shaken in the past several months in the presidential election and 2021 Senate runoff contests, could get even more tenuous in the years to come.
Just look at Virginia, Wasserman said, noting how changing demographics over the past 10 years have significantly changed the political power dynamic in what was once a deep-red state that sat at the heart of the Confederacy.
“Georgia is roughly where Virginia was a decade ago: Republicans still control state government and may be able to redistrict the state to their liking one last time…but long-term/demographically, the writing is kinda on the wall,” Wasserman tweeted.
Georgia is roughly where Virginia was a decade ago: Republicans still control state government and may be able to redistrict the state to their liking one last time…but long-term/demographically, the writing is kinda on the wall.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 26, 2021
Virginia experienced exponential population growth in recent years, going up 38% since 1990, according to the New York Times. The state’s growth concentrated largely in suburban areas and also added more residents who were nonwhite with a likelihood to vote more Democratic.
In 2019, the year in which Democrats took control of Virginia’s Legislature for the first time in about 25 years, 1 in 10 people eligible to vote were born outside the United States, an uptick from 1 in 28 who were eligible in 1990. Virginia also has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor.
In Georgia, where Republicans still control the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion, Wasserman said Democrats could seize on the GOP-backed voting restrictions and rally a big turnout in the midterm elections in 2022.
“If past is prologue, Georgia Republicans just handed Democrats their best turnout tool for 2022 & beyond,” Wasserman tweeted.
The legislation signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, on Thursday puts more restrictions on voter ID rules and limits ballot drop boxes, among other things.
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The bill is among the first to be signed into law after the 2020 election, which stirred concerns about voter security and election fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies. Democrats strongly opposed the bill, citing that it was an attack on voting rights.
Georgia, which has been touted by some analysts as potentially being on its way to becoming a swing state, voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, President Joe Biden, for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992. Georgia voters also handed Democratic victories to Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in its highly competitive runoff elections in January.
