As results come in from Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections, the chances are growing that two Democratic Senators from that state will soon be headed to Capitol Hill.
Those races, along with President-elect Joe Biden’s win there, signal major changes in Georgia politics. ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd says they’re part of changes happening throughout the South and Southwest.
“This election and a series of the last few elections have shown … there’s a resorting of the electoral map in of states across the country,” Dowd told Texas Standard.
Arizona, Nevada and Georgia have all shifted from red to purple. The shift is more subtle in Texas, but it’s happening here, too, Dowd says.
“Texas has shifted from deep red to light red. And my guess is, along the same lines, it will soon in the next election or two or three, will shift to purple,” Dowd said.
The reason for the shifts, Dowd says, is more complicated than just East and West-coast Democrats moving into these areas and changing the politics. Suburbs are also growing, and Democrats have been increasingly successful in those areas. It’s also the result of organizers, like former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, reaching out to voters who normally didn’t participate in elections. Dowd says turning out those voters showed that Georgia was never as deep-red a state as many had assumed.
“I think that Georgia, like Texas and like some other states, have been more nonvoting states than they have been deeply Republican states,” he said.
But even though Texas and Georgia share similar demographic shifts and voting patterns, Texas has father to go, Dowd says, in the shift from red
to purple.
“It’s just going to take a little while longer for a place like Texas, which has the same dynamics, because it started out longer and deeper red,” he said.
