I'm skeptical, given underlying trends; Georgia could be doing what North Carolina did in the 2000s. Most of the Democratic margin in the State is due to how much of the electorate are Black voters and because of suburban disgruntlement with the Trump era GOP. First, to examine the former:
So, we have a combination of low fertility and high mortality among Black Georgians. It's gruesome math but, just being blunt about it, that means Georgia is going to become more White over time and we know Whites, regardless of age, skew Republican:
For a bit of irony, those 30-44 voters were 18-29 voters in 2008; Obama Millennials ended up voting exactly like their Boomer parents did as they aged. Noticeably, Gen X is also very Republican;
again, we see White voters become more Republican as they age. However, what really has seen the Democrats
do so good the last few cycles is their gains among Suburban Whites. There is
reason to be skeptical this will continue, though:
Contrary to popular perception,
less than a third of the suburban vote nationwide is made up of college-educated whites, the presumed locus of maximum appeal for anti-MAGAism. In fact, about three-fifths of suburban white voters are working class (noncollege).
It is widely misunderstood how vital the latter voters were to Biden’s victory in 2020. While suburban white college voters shifted around 10 margin points toward Biden, suburban white working class voters also had a solid 5 point pro-Democratic shift. Because of this group’s larger size, their shift toward Biden contributed almost as much to the Democrats’ improved margin over Trump in 2020 as suburban white college voters.
And just how liberal are these college-educated voters anyway? Overall,
according to Gallup, just 30 percent of adults with a four year degree only describe themselves as liberal and 36 percent of those with some postgraduate education (the less numerous group) do so. Putting this together with the data about suburban demographics, this implies that perhaps one-ninth (a third of a third) of suburban voters are white college-educated liberals. Perhaps the figure is a bit higher but I doubt that it’s much higher.
To drill down a bit further, consider some illustrative data from once and future battleground states. In Pennsylvania, suburban voters are either around urban cores in large metro areas (Philly, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Harrisburg, Scranton) or in small metro areas (Erie, Reading, Lancaster, York, etc). According to
analysis by William Frey of Brookings, the former areas are 58 percent white noncollege to 29 percent white college, while the latter areas are 64 percent white working class to 23 percent white college.
In Wisconsin, the situation is no different. Suburbs around Milwaukee and Madison are 53 percent white working class to 37 percent white college while Wisconsin’s smaller metro areas (Oshkosh, Green Bay, Appleton, etc) are 65 percent white noncollege to 25 percent white college.
And in Georgia, the Atlanta and Augusta suburbs are 49 percent white working class to just 19 percent white college, while the small metro areas (Savannah, Macon, etc.) are 42 percent white noncollege to 18 percent white college. There are large proportions of black and secondarily Hispanic voters in these suburbs but they are generally less liberal than white college graduates and more focused on economic issues (only 33 percent of black voters and 22 percent of Hispanic voters in battleground states could name a specific thing that President Biden and the Democratic majority in Congress have done in the last two years that has directly helped them in their lives).
This suggests that Democrats’ hold on the suburban vote—such as it is—is far more tenuous than might be implied by the popular image of socially liberal, college-educated suburban voters who can no longer countenance voting for the GOP under any circumstances. Democrats’ target suburban voters must necessarily include legions of moderate and/or working class voters who might not draw as much sustenance from a steady diet of anti-MAGAism as Democrats anticipate.
And just how much hold do the Democrats have on suburban voters anyway? In the AP/NORC
VoteCast survey, the most reliable election survey available, Democrats carried suburban voters nationwide by a single point in 2022. That’s a slippage of 9 points from the Democrats’ 10 point margin
in 2020. Interestingly, the slippage in Democratic support from 2020 to 2022 was actually
larger among nonwhite than white suburban voters.
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