I have a whole series of thoughts on this topic, but it's already late so I will just post a couple of initial things.
Roy Barnes was the best chance for us in 2010 and may still be come 2014. I have another candidate in mind for 2014 or perhaps 2018. I'm fairly against the idea of a third Barnes run, but he did manage to perform very well given the 2010 national wave of Republicanism. As was mentioned before, Barnes managed to halve the margin of loss in 2010 when compared to 2006 - which should have been a great year for Georgia Democrats (and very well have been, relatively) but was a disaster.
Here's a map showing the swing in 2010 compared to 2006 (LOL at the four cute counties that decided to decrease both RPI & DPI and go + Libertarian):
Barnes managed to gain some relative traction in many parts of the state, including the unbreakable northern part. Deal had hometown advantage in NE Georgia and did quite well in conservative, formerly Democratic areas in SE Georgia. Again, I have to emphasize: does this look like a typical 2010 swing map?
Also, there's this map showing above-average (% of pop) minority and white counties.
Since the map was designed to illustrate electoral possibilities:
- With whites, I defined "above-average" at 60%, which is 5 points higher than the state average. (votes in higher proportion)
- With minorities, I defined "above-average" at 40%, which is 5 points lower than the state average (sizable ineligible Latino population)
A ton of potential in many counties awaits the Democratic Party if it ever develops an effective GOTV effort outside of Atlanta.
And finally, what I imagine an ever-so-slight 2014/2018 Democratic victory looking like, assuming the candidate is white (I can't see your image, cope; would love to compare):
