Tuesday night’s presidential election night in Georgia looked a lot like 2020 as it began four years later – with former President Donald Trump building a lead while his Democratic opponent banked on late returns in big urban centers. But Republican gains on the margins added up for Trump as he built a lead that was too much for Vice President Kamala Harris to overcome as the clock ticked past midnight.
While Harris picked up edges in a handful of suburban counties Trump stacked votes in dozens of rural ones, adding several percentage points – and thousands of votes – to his 2020 totals. He also managed to overperform in urban counties – still losing, but nabbing back votes in counties like Clayton, Fulton, and DeKalb.
Election day wasn’t without drama: In DeKalb County a judge ordered precincts to be kept open late following a string of hoax bomb threats that targeted precincts in the left-leaning county. A similar order in Gwinnett kept a pair of affected precincts open about an hour late. Those reports came on the heels of threats at 12 other Atlanta-area precincts earlier in the day, which Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger claimed had Russian origins.
“We’ve heard some threats that were of Russian origin. I don’t know how to describe that that’s viable – we don’t think they are, but in the interest of public safety, we always check that out, and we’ll just continue to be very responsible when we hear about stuff like that,” Raffensperger said. “We identified the source, and it was from Russia.”
None of the threats were deemed credible after being investigated and cleared by law enforcement.
Outside groups, including InsiderAdvantage Georgia, began to call the race for Trump at around 10:30pm. Republican officials like Raffensperger and state GOP Chair Josh McKoon took their victory laps soon thereafter.
As this is written the race overall is not technically over – the Harris campaign still holds out hope that the ‘Blue Wall,’ Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, can hold out and deliver her the 270 electoral votes she needs to win the election. But with Georgia (and North Carolina) closing ranks around the Republican nominee it looks like Georgia, is red once again. And the blue wall isn’t looking too good for her either – Republicans celebrated late into the night to mark what looks like a massive Trump victory nationwide.
