Georgia on my mind: The 2026 Almanac of American Politics

For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. In September, the Almanac will be publishing its 2026 edition, with more than 2,000 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more.

Below are excerpts from the new chapters in the 2026 Almanac on the state of Georgia and Gov. Brian Kemp, written by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson — a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, a senior columnist for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and a contributor of political coverage for U.S. News & World Report — has written for eight editions of the Almanac since 2000. For the 2026 edition, he served as chief author.

Readers can receive a 15 percent discount if they purchase the new Almanac at its website and use the code Saporta2026 at checkout. 

GEORGIA: 

Georgia, once a Democratic bastion like the rest of the South, went heavily for Republicans in the 1990s and much of the 2000s, in both federal and state races. But in 2020, Democrats surged not only to a Georgia victory in the presidential race but also in two Senate runoffs, followed by a 2022 election in which Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won another runoff for a full term. However, Republicans remain formidable in state races, especially Gov. Brian Kemp, who was reelected in 2022 by a seven-point margin. In 2024, Georgia was a fiercely contested presidential battleground. Donald Trump won it on his way to retaking the White House, even though the state shifted right less than the nation, as Atlanta’s populous suburbs grew ever bluer.

Georgia was the last of the original 13 colonies to be founded, by British soldier and politician James Oglethorpe in 1733. He was a humanitarian who called Georgia an “asylum of the unfortunate”—reserved for debtors and other outcasts from England—and forbade slavery. But the settlers rebelled and repealed his ban in 1750. In 1790, the first census showed Georgia—the biggest state by area of the original 13—with the smallest population of any of them, except for tiny Delaware and Rhode Island. Georgia was the fifth-largest slave state when the Civil War began. 

Early in the 20th century, Georgia was still largely agrarian and sparsely populated. Then, beginning in the 1960s, the state shared in the Sun Belt growth explosion. By 2000, it ranked among the top 10 most populous states; it is now the eighth largest. This is a byproduct of explosive growth in metropolitan Atlanta, which spreads out over red clay hills. The city’s population increased from 3.1 million people in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2000; an estimated 6.3 million people live there today. The Atlanta Regional Commission projects that by 2050, greater Atlanta’s population will rise to about 8 million. Georgia’s median income is $3,000 below the national average, but it exceeds that of all the other former Confederate states save Virginia and Texas.

Even before its demographic surge, Atlanta was in many ways the center of the South. Before the Civil War, the city, near the Appalachian mountain chain’s southern end, was a railroad junction. Its capture by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in September 1864 and his scorched-earth March to the Sea helped seal President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection victory in November 1864 and the Union victory over the Confederacy seven months later. 

Neither Atlanta’s rise to world eminence nor its role as the “capital” of the South was inevitable. A century ago, Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans all had stronger claims to being the region’s cultural fulcrum. But in the 20th century, two figures imprinted Atlanta in the national imagination. One was Margaret Mitchell, whose 1936 novel “Gone with the Wind” inspired the multiple-Oscar-winning 1939 movie (and has more recently been critiqued for its sympathetic portrayal of the antebellum South). The other was Martin Luther King Jr., who was based in Atlanta for most of his career and who, with Atlanta-based organizations, led the civil rights revolution that transformed the South and the nation.

Linking the two was Atlanta’s business community, notably Robert Woodruff, who headed Coca-Cola from 1923 to 1955 and made Coke—which John Stith Pemberton invented locally—a worldwide enterprise. Perhaps understanding that a global company could not afford to be associated with racial segregation, Woodruff and William Hartsfield, the city’s mayor from 1937 to 1961, cooperated with Black leaders and promoted Atlanta as “the city too busy to hate.” Hartsfield’s successor, Ivan Allen Jr., elected in 1961 and 1965, supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964; downtown development accelerated with Peachtree Center and the first Hyatt Regency. 

If geography made Atlanta a natural rail hub like Chicago in the mid-19th century, politicians—Mayors Hartsfield in Atlanta and Richard J. Daley in Chicago—made them air hubs in the mid-20th century. Today, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport leads the nation in passenger traffic. In 1996, came the last, great jolt that created modern Georgia: the summer Olympics, which sparked a wave of economic development and worldwide media exposure. Today, the metro area’s diversified economy ranges from credit cards (some 70 percent of transactions nationwide are processed in the Atlanta area) to television and film production, including such productions as “Black Panther,” “The Walking Dead” and “Ozark” (in which Georgia stands in for Missouri). Georgia’s $4 billion-plus film industry—centered on Tyler Perry Studios, Turner Studios, Trillith Studios and Shadowbox Studios—has remained vibrant even as politicians have sometimes second-guessed the state’s tax-credit allowance.

Today, Georgia is 33 percent Black, 11 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. That’s the second-highest Black percentage of any state, behind Mississippi, and the second-lowest percentage of non-Hispanic whites in any state east of the Mississippi River, trailing Maryland. The Atlanta Regional Commission projects that the Atlanta area’s white population will fall from 47.5 percent in 2015 to 31 percent in 2050. Almost 11 percent of Georgians today are foreign-born, up from 2.7 percent in 1990.

Metro Atlanta’s population features wide belts of prosperity, along with top-flight cultural institutions, a large millennial population and a vibrant LGBTQ+ community. Blacks have been moving to middle-class suburban counties west and southeast of the city, while Hispanics have been clustering along Interstate 85 in Gwinnett County and Interstate 75 in Cobb County to the north. Gwinnett is home to hubs of Korean, Cuban, Indian, Vietnamese and Mexican residents—such as Duluth, a city in which Asians account for about a quarter of the population. Nonwhite children account for three of every four students in Gwinnett’s school system, up from one in five two decades ago, according to the Washington Post. The FX television show “Atlanta,” a popular and critical hit, has given the diverse region national cultural cred. 

But high-profile crimes have also attracted national attention. One was the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man in Brunswick, after three white men pursued him, thinking he was a break-in suspect. In 2022, the Georgia Legislature passed a resolution establishing “Ahmaud Arbery Day,” one day after a federal jury convicted three white men of hate crimes in the case. Another incident that attracted national attention was the Atlanta police shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally wounded while fleeing after he had fallen asleep in a Wendy’s drive-thru lane. Then, in March 2021, a white shooter killed eight people, including six Asian American women, in a rampage at massage parlors. In 2024, 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley’s murder by a Venezuelan migrant in the U.S. illegally led to the passage of a federal law named for Riley. It requires that people arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting be detained if they are in the U.S. illegally; Kemp signed similar state legislation.

Georgia’s rural regions have struggled. The state, which has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, has the fifth-highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation; this has led to a rash of rural hospital closures and counties without practicing physicians. Georgia’s increasingly efficient agriculture sector ranks first or second in the production of broiler chickens, pecans, cotton and peanuts (today’s output of the latter would have put Jimmy Carter’s Plains peanut farm to shame). Georgia also has arguably become arguably the nation’s center for electric vehicle manufacturing. Hyundai Motor Group began producing electric sport utility vehicles in 2024 at a plant west of Savannah. Another EV producer, Rivian, is readying a factory but has faced financial obstacles. The EV sector’s future is in doubt if the second Trump administration claws back federal dollars promised under legislation President Joe Biden signed.

Georgia cast the second-highest Democratic percentage for president in 1960. But in the next two elections, Georgia voters swung sharply right, backing Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968. In the mid-20th century, Democratic primaries typically decided statewide election contests as rural-supported segregationists or conservatives outvoted Atlanta-supported moderates. This changed with the emergence of Carter, a former two-term state senator who was elected governor in 1970 with a rural base. After taking office, Carter proclaimed racial reconciliation and installed King’s portrait in the state Capitol. Carter thus became one of the first politicians from the rural South to celebrate and honor the Civil Rights Movement, and in the process, set himself on the road to being elected president in 1976. Carter, who died at age 100 in December 2024, was succeeded by a series of Democratic governors with connections to rural parts of the state—George Busbee, Joe Frank Harris, Zell Miller and Roy Barnes.

Then, for a long historical moment, Georgia was a mostly Republican state, as affluent metro Atlanta voters became generally Republican and white voters outside metro Atlanta became GOP stalwarts. For years, Georgia’s most prominent politician nationally was Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich, who became House speaker. George W. Bush carried the state 55 percent to 42 percent in 2000, and for the next three elections, GOP presidential nominees carried it with between 52 percent and 58 percent of the vote. Republicans captured the state Senate in 2002 and the state House in 2004 and have maintained large majorities ever since. The GOP dominated statewide and federal races for the better part of two decades.

But the Trump era’s changing demographic and partisan trends began to realign Georgia politics. In 2016, Trump won the state, but three metro counties that had backed Mitt Romney in 2012 (Gwinnett, Cobb and Henry) shifted to Hillary Clinton, and Clinton carried several other metro counties (Fulton, Douglas, Rockdale and DeKalb) by margins eight to 13 points wider than Barack Obama had in 2012. In 2020, Biden turned Clinton’s five-point statewide deficit into a victory of less than 12,000 votes. Like Clinton, Biden won the Atlanta area’s nine core counties, but Biden prevailed by even bigger margins. “If you jumped into a car at the state Capitol, it would take nearly a half-hour’s drive, in any direction, to find a precinct won by Trump,” Dave Weigel wrote in The Washington Post. 

However, Biden’s victory was narrow, and even after a hand-recount confirmed it, Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to strong-arm Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Kemp, and other Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to put him over the top. Trump’s obsession with losing the state was widely believed to have contributed to the GOP’s loss in the two Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoffs, to Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. In 2022, Trump sought payback by supporting Kemp’s and Raffensperger’s primary challengers, but the incumbents survived and won their general elections easily. Trump later faced election interference charges in Fulton County, but the case dragged on and ultimately evaporated after he won back the White House.

After the 2020 election, Georgia Republicans drafted legislation to overhaul the state’s voting rules. The measure passed on party-line votes, with Republicans in the majority, and although the final version left out some of the more controversial changes, Democrats assailed it, with Biden and others calling in “Jim Crow 2.0,” and Major League Baseball moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta. This characterization would eventually become less than convincing after turnout remained high in 2022; Raffensperger later charged that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Biden “lied to the people of Georgia and the country for political gain.” In the 2022 midterms, the Trump-backed Senate candidate, retired football star Herschel Walker, lost a runoff to Warnock, with a crucial segment of voters, especially in Atlanta, splitting their tickets between Warnock and Kemp. In contrast, Republicans prevailed easily in downballot races in which Trump wasn’t as big a factor.

In 2024, Georgia was a heavily contested presidential prize. Trump won by about two percentage points, although Georgia swung right less than any other battleground state except Wisconsin and North Carolina. Trump gained enough in rural Georgia and among nonwhite voters in Atlanta to cancel out continued Democratic gains in many of the suburban counties near Atlanta (which stood out as some of Kamala Harris’ strongest showings in her losing bid). Meanwhile, a Republican-led redistricting that took effect for U.S. House races in 2024 ensured a bevy of safe seats: In Georgia, the smallest margin in any district won by a Republican was 21 points; for Democrats it was 13 points. 

GOVERNOR’S OFFICE: 

Republican Brian Kemp narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018, with strong support from President Donald Trump. But when Trump narrowly lost the state in his 2020 reelection bid, he lashed out at Kemp for certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, even fomenting a primary challenge to the governor two years later. Kemp prevailed: His distance from Trump drew enough support from Atlanta’s suburbs that he easily defeated Abrams in a rematch, even as Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock was winning a full term. In office, Kemp has maintained a socially conservative image while winning points from liberals for wooing electric vehicle production and continuing to defy Trump, a unique framing for a Republican that will be tested if he runs for president. Despite urging from Republicans, Kemp decided not to run against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in 2026.

Growing up, Kemp worked on a farm near Athens. His ancestors include a Revolutionary War major, George Washington’s postmaster general and several state legislators. He graduated from the University of Georgia—the fourth generation of his family to do so—as he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. Kemp found financial success in homebuilding and real estate, even as some of his ancillary investments in agriculture struggled. Frustrated in his interactions with local zoning rules, Kemp ran for the state Senate in 2002 and won in a strong Republican year. In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for agriculture commissioner, but four years later, Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed him to the vacant secretary of state post. In that position, Kemp created a system that allowed voters to register online and by mobile app. Meanwhile, critics accused him of overzealously purging voters from the rolls. Kemp was also in office during a data breach of private information—including Social Security numbers—that affected more than 6 million voters.

In 2017, Kemp became the first major Republican to announce a bid for governor, in anticipation of an open seat left by two-term Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Of the candidates seeking the nomination, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle had the most establishment support, although several other candidates ran, too. Each aggressively courted the Republican base, but Kemp was perhaps the most uncompromising: In one ad, he pointed a shotgun at a “young man” who was “interested in” one of his daughters. In another, he promised to use his pickup truck to “round up illegal criminals.” Late in the primary campaign, Cagle miscalculated by attacking former state Sen. Hunter Hill, hoping to face Kemp in a runoff. Cagle got what he wanted but ran into some controversies; the two-man runoff amplified the base-versus-establishment dynamic that would boost Kemp. The coup de grace was Trump’s tweeted endorsement of Kemp, who won, 70 percent to 30 percent.

In the general election, Kemp faced Abrams, who had defeated Stacey Evans, 76 percent to 24 percent, in the “two Staceys” primary. Abrams, who is Black, was born poor but earned degrees from Spelman College, the University of Texas and Yale Law School; she served as deputy city attorney in Atlanta, started two businesses, and, in her spare time, wrote romance novels under a pen name. In 2006, Abrams had won a seat in the state House; four years later, she was elected minority leader, at times shrewdly cooperating with the Republican majority. 

Despite some feints toward the center, the general election developed into a battle between clashing ideologies. The candidates split sharply over Medicaid expansion, abortion, immigration, gun policy and marijuana legalization, as Trump supported Kemp. Unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud dominated the campaign’s closing weeks—the issue was particularly sensitive for Kemp, because he had refused to step down as secretary of state while running for governor, which critics painted as a conflict of interest. When the votes were counted, the margin was close enough that Abrams refused to concede (and never really did before the 2022 election). Kemp won by 55,000 votes, with only an 18,000-vote cushion above the threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

In his first two years, Kemp signed hate crimes legislation that had stalled in previous legislative sessions; the debate came amid outrage over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man pursued by three white men in Brunswick who said they thought he was a burglary suspect. “We witnessed a horrific, hate-filled act of violence,” Kemp said during the legislative debate. “We saw injustice with our own eyes.” (The defendants were later convicted of murder and other crimes against Arbery.) The governor also signed a six-week abortion ban that has remained in place despite legal challenges. During the coronavirus pandemic, Kemp ended restrictions on many types of businesses, including gyms, tattoo parlors, and movie theaters. Public health specialists and local elected officials opposed the move and its speed and scope even prompted Trump to say, “I was not happy with Brian Kemp.” But later, Kemp, like other Republican governors, trumpeted vindication, saying that his early moves toward reopening bolstered the state’s economy.

After Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election, the ousted president turned his ire on the state officials who refused to overturn the election results, including Kemp—who had already irked the president by appointing Kelly Loeffler to a vacant Senate seat rather than Trump’s pick, then-Rep. Doug Collins (now veterans affairs secretary in Trump’s second administration). Trump called the governor he had once endorsed a “clown” and a “fool,” and he retweeted a call for Kemp to go to jail. Kemp said Trump’s attacks had prompted a wave of social media hatred, including death threats, targeting him and his family. 

In 2021, Georgia remained in the nation’s political eye, as lawmakers passed and Kemp signed an election-law overhaul that Democrats decried, leading Major League Baseball to pull its All-Star Game from Atlanta. However, some of the most controversial proposals didn’t make it into the bill’s final version, and Kemp and others would eventually claim vindication in 2022 as voter turnout remained high in the primaries, the general election,and the runoff. 

In the run-up to his 2022 reelection bid, Kemp weighed in on some divisive issues. He signed a bill preventing cities and counties from making large cuts to their police budgets, legislation to let residents carry concealed handguns without a permit and a “bill of rights” to allow parents greater oversight of K-12 teaching materials. Kemp also enacted curbs on teaching “divisive concepts” such as race and a barrier to transgender athletes participating on sports teams that do not align with their birth gender. 

However, some of Kemp’s most significant accomplishments came on less controversial matters, namely economic development. He helped reel in Hyundai Motor Group and Rivian, two electric vehicle manufacturers, to build separate factories, along with a factory for SK Battery and a major plant for solar-panel manufacturer Hanwha. Kemp cited these projects in his second inaugural address, promising to make Georgia “the electric mobility capital of America.” 

Trump, still steaming over Kemp’s actions after the 2020 election, persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to challenge the incumbent in the Republican primary. But Perdue was underfunded and lackluster on the campaign trail; Kemp demolished him, 74 percent to 22 percent. In the general election, Kemp faced Abrams again, but the rematch proved to be less than titanic; Kemp led comfortably throughout. As Abrams sought to energize voters unhappy with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, a crucial sliver of suburban Republicans, who had backed Biden in 2020 and disliked the Trump-backed, scandal-laden 2022 Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, appreciated Kemp’s continuing opposition to Trump. Kemp defeated Abrams, 53 percent to 46 percent. (This time, Abrams did concede.) In jurisdictions around greater Atlanta, Kemp consistently outran Walker—who Kemp formally backed but kept some distance—by 5 to 14 points, helping explain why Kemp won and Walker lost. 

In 2023, Kemp signed a bill banning hormones or surgical treatment for gender-affirming care, though it faced legal challenges. That same year, Georgia became the first state in the nation to enact a Medicaid work requirement. At a groundbreaking for an $800 million Anovion battery parts plant in rural Bainbridge, Kemp criticized restrictions in legislation Biden signed that helped make the plant possible. In 2024, Kemp signed a bill to enable parents in low-performing schools to receive $6,500 to pay private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. He also signed legislation to expand the offenses requiring cash bail.

But Kemp’s tense relationship with Trump dominated headlines during the 2024 presidential race. Kemp said publicly that he did not vote for Trump (or anyone) in Georgia’s Republican primary in March, although he said he would support Trump in November. In August, Trump reamed Kemp out during an Atlanta rally, saying: “He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp, bad guy.” Later that month, Kemp sat for a Fox News interview with Trump ally Sean Hannity and said, “We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House.” Trump responded by praising Kemp on social media. In September, Kemp thanked Biden for the federal role in responding to Hurricane Helene, despite Trump’s false claims that Biden and Kemp had been unable to reach each other. Finally, in October, Trump and Kemp made their first joint appearance in years at the site of hurricane destruction in Evans. 

Kemp, who began a term as the Republican Governors Association’s chair in 2025, is term-limited. He has been touted as a future presidential contender if the party decides to move past the MAGA model in 2028. Political forecasters expect a competitive contest for governor to succeed him in 2026.