With U.S. Rep. Tom Price tapped to head the Department of Health and Human Services by President-elect Donald Trump, Georgians will be interested to see who his potential successor might be. InsiderAdvantage has already listed the names of some announced and potential candidates for the Sixth U.S. Congressional District. But today we analyze the district’s past voting patterns, demographics and other voter information.
Accompanying this article is map of the congressional district (in green) with the State Senate districts (overlap) in red. Senate District 32 on the map is represented by Judson Hill (East Cobb) who has announced for the seat. Notice almost all the Cobb portion of CD 6 overlaps with his State Senate district. Senate District 56, in the middle of CD 6, is held by John Albers and Senate Dist 21 at top of CD 6 is represented by Brandon Beach.
Redistricting in 2011 eliminated the Cherokee County part of the district but added more of DeKalb and Fulton. A big share (but not a majority) of the district’s population is in Fulton County. Normally the district votes heavily Republican, but there were a lot of defections from Trump here last month— overall, CD 6 only gave Trump 48% of the vote compared to 47% for Clinton and 5% Libertarian. In 2012 presidential election, Romney crushed Obama here by a 61-37%.
This is probably the most “moderate” of the 10 GOP-held congressional districts in Georgia— very high-income, lots of transplants, fiscally conservative but less so on social issues. For example, in 2012 the district gave 77% support to Sunday retail alcohol sales and a somewhat lukewarm 55% support for “Personhood” (an advisory question on the GOP state primary ballot). And it backed candidate Marco Rubio over Trump in the March presidential primary.
In the 2014 GOP US Senate primary, CD 6 gave Handel 39% of the vote, David Perdue 31%, Jack Kingston 14%, Phil Gingrey 9% and Paul Broun 5%. Of the roughly 53,000 votes cast by CD 6 in this primary, about 36% came from the Cobb portion of the district, 43% from Fulton and 21% from DeKalb. (The DeKalb portion of CD 6 is the district’s most politically marginal part. Hillary Clinton easily led Trump in the DeKalb portion of the district, which goes all the way down into Tucker. Trump barely led Clinton in the Fulton portion of the district.)
Keep in mind, though, that in 2017 the Cobb portion will probably cast a disproportionately high share of the vote. The Cobb section of CD 6 is mostly single-family housing, while Fulton CD 6 has lots of apartments, especially in Sandy Springs. No surprise that homeowners, who are less transient than apartment dwellers, show up better to the polls– especially since the race to succeed Price is a special election.
