Talk Elections

If the northern border of Georgia was moved 50 miles south you would get rid of the deep red mountain counties and some of the even deeper red northern suburbs, where most of the Republican votes exist in the state. What's left would be Metro Atlanta, the black belt and the coast.

Although I would be sad to cede the beautiful North Georgia Mountains, wouldn't this improve Democrats' performance in the peach state?

Isn't that kind of a pointless question? If you remove the most Republican part of the state of course its going to improve the Dem's performance.

Not necessarily. There could be enough Republican strength elsewhere to win the state outright, but by a smaller margin. And I'm only moving the border 50 miles south, so there are still a lot of those GOP areas in the state.

If y'all took the border down by about 50 miles, and every county that the 50 mile line touched would be ceded, Obama would have won the state in 2008 by three points, which was very similar to the 2012 result. Y'all would keep Cobb County (yay), but the line is pretty close to Athens, but they're still yours! Unfortunately, 1.5 million people live in these counties, so you'd lose either two or three congressional districts, depending on how fast Southern Georgia and the Atlanta metro area grows.

Georgia would look pretty weird:

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McCain won the red 75-24 and Obama won the blue 51-48. So yes, Georgia would be a Toss-Up/Lean D state.

Yes, 51-48 (2008).

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Just from a quick glance, I'd guess that it would have been 49-49 in 2012.

EDIT: dang, a deluge of posts beat me to it

Looking at the 2008-2012 swing, it looks like Southern Georgia stayed relatively the same, but Northern Georgia trended strongly to the Republican, so this new and mountainless Georgia might have been won by the same percentage in 2012 as 2008.

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Looking at that, yeah, you're probably right. It is possible that Fulton's diff in swing to Romney versus the swings for Obama in the south might have allowed Romney to gain a point over McCain; there's only 3 Obama swing counties on there in "New Georgia" that have more than 100k people.

awesome guys! What if you only moved the border 30 miles south? This way you still have Cherokee and Forsyth counties.

Something like this?

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In this case, McCain wins the red 74-25 and wins the blue 51-48, the opposite of before. I'll tell ya, those Exurban counties just above the metro are very powerful.

If you include every county that was touched by the 30 mile line:

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Then Obama would lose the Mountainless Georgia by a point.

Isn't this like saying that IL votes like IN if you remove Cook county?

Nyes... as that's an even larger part of the state, and not unlike saying Maryland would be a Republican state if you removed the DC suburbs - ie pure lunacy territory. This is more like saying Virginia would still be a Republican state if you removed the DC suburbs. :D

Actually, Virginia would be an even worse example. Not that any of these scenarios really matter, but it would need 60% of its population from the most Democratic areas removed to achieve the swing (12 points) that the removal of just 20% of Georgia's population from the most Republican areas produced in my above map. Maryland would need 29% of its population (from Prince George's & Montgomery Counties) removed, and Illinois would need 32% of its population removed (the northern 2/3 of Cook/south to Evergreen Park, minus the areas of Barrington, Streamwood & Hoffman Estates in the NW) to achieve the same swing.

What program are you using to do this? It looks like fun:)

FWIW, these are 2012 results.

30-mile threshold:
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Romney- 51.7%
Obama- 46.9%

2.4% swing from McCain to Romney.

50-mile threshold:
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Obama- 49.5%
Romney- 49.2%

2.0% swing to Romney.


DRA. (http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html)

Indeed. Large parts of 'the mountains' are in the Atlanta metropolitan area for God's sake.

Two counties in the 30 mile band, five in the fifty mile. 140k net votes for Romney among all five (most of the votes are from Forsyth and Cherokee).

Interesting.  The far North of Georgia is quite a Republican bastion, but wasn't North Georgia LBJ's best part of the state in 1964?  Things have changed.

there was no backlash against LBJ in 1964 up there because there were no black people in North Georgia to integrate. The northern part of Georgia is really different from the rest of the state- more like appalachia- and politics reflected that.