Georgia

Jon Ossoff kept his Senate seat, winning by 18.1 points over Republican Mike Collins, in a state Donald Trump carried by 2.2 points two years earlier. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governor’s office from the Republicans by 8.7 points over Rick Jackson; the Associated Press called the race after Jackson conceded.¹ Democrats won all eight other statewide offices on the ballot, seven of them from Republicans: lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, agriculture, insurance, labor and one of two Public Service Commission seats. The narrowest was agriculture commissioner, which Katherine E. Juhan-Arnold won by 7.7 points. No U.S. House seat changed hands. The delegation stays at nine Republicans and five Democrats, although Democratic candidates won the House vote statewide, D+12.4, after losing it in 2024, R+5.2.

Set against the 2024 presidential vote, the Senate race moved 20.3 points toward the Democrats, from R+2.2 to D+18.1. Ossoff drew 97 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here; Collins drew 64 for every 100 of Trump’s. The Senate race drew 80% as many votes as the 2024 presidential election and 106% of the 2022 midterm’s.

The move was large everywhere. Metro Atlanta, which cast 59% of the 2024 vote, moved 20.5 points, from D+13.7 to D+34.2. The smaller metro areas moved 19.2 and changed sides, from R+13.2 to D+6.0. The small towns and rural counties moved least, 15.5 points, and still voted Republican, R+27.8.

Houston County, in the Warner Robins metro area, is the largest of the 12 counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Ossoff this year. It went from R+11.3 to D+8.8 on 64,918 votes. The widest swing among large counties came in Gwinnett County, 26.1 points, from D+16.5 to D+42.6. Paulding County, in the Atlanta area, moved 23.8 and finished at R+0.3, nearly even. Fulton County, the largest county, went from D+44.9 to D+59.3, and Cobb County from D+14.9 to D+34.2. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Georgia has divided government for the first time in more than two decades, Atlanta News First reported.² Democrats netted 10 state House seats and hold at least 91 of 180 on Associated Press race calls, enough for a majority. Two House races were still uncalled and a third goes to a runoff, none of which can change control, the Georgia Recorder reported.³ Republicans kept the Senate, though their majority shrank from 33 seats to 29 in our count. House Democrats, a minority for more than 20 years, nominated Carolyn Hugley for speaker. “After more than two decades of Republicans in control of all of state government, they’ve given Democrats the opportunity to lead and we intend to deliver,” she said.³

Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of the members of each house, Ballotpedia’s copy of the constitution says, and neither party is near that in either chamber.⁴ Bottoms can veto bills without being overridden but needs the Republican Senate to pass her own program. She has said she wants to expand Medicaid and end the Georgia Pathways program. “Our goal is simple: to be ready to govern on day one,” she said on November 6 as she named a transition team.⁵ The new lieutenant governor, Democrat Josh McLaurin, will preside over the Senate, which the Georgia Recorder said lets Democrats shape which bills reach a vote there; Atlanta News First reported that Republican senators may remove much of the office’s authority.^{2, 3}

The legislature draws congressional and legislative maps by simple majority and the governor can veto them, according to Ballotpedia, so each party can now block the other’s lines.⁶ Outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp said he would not call a special session to redraw districts or limit the governor’s powers before Bottoms takes office.⁵ The secretary of state’s office, which FOX 5 Atlanta called the state’s chief elections post, passes to Democrat Penny Brown Reynolds, who defeated Republican state Rep. Tim Fleming. It returns to the Democrats for the first time in roughly two decades, the station reported.¹

Once two-thirds of the General Assembly has put an amendment on the ballot, it needs only a majority of the voters, News4JAX’s voters guide explains.⁷ Voters approved all three. Amendment 1 raises the maximum acreage that qualifies for the conservation use property tax classification from 2,000 to 4,000 acres, and passed with 53.9%. Amendment 2 makes elections for probate judges nonpartisan, with 68.4%, and Amendment 3 creates a dedicated emergency 911 fund, with 77.7%.⁸

The Cobb County school board changed from a Republican to a Democratic majority on preliminary results, and Democrats appeared to win five of the seven Fulton County Commission seats, four of them open and the fifth held by the commission’s only Republican incumbent on the ballot, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.⁹ Georgia’s Supreme Court seats were decided earlier, on May 19: Justices Sarah Warren and Charlie Bethel defeated two liberal challengers in officially nonpartisan races, and Justice Ben Land was unopposed, Bolts reported.¹⁰

Republicans held all nine of their U.S. House seats, though their margins shrank. James “Jim” Kingston won the First District by 2.8 points where Trump had won by 15.2, and Rick W. Allen the 12th by 4.2. Collins carried 120 of the state’s 159 counties. Republicans kept their state Senate majority and took two state House districts Democrats had held, one in the Athens area and one in middle Georgia, the Georgia Recorder reported.³

Raphael G. Warnock’s Senate seat will be on the ballot in 2028, in a state that voted Republican by 2.2 points for president in 2024 and Democratic by 18.1 in this year’s Senate race. Three more Georgia Supreme Court justices, all appointed by Republican governors, will be up for election in 2028, Bolts reported; when a justice resigns early, the governor appoints the replacement.¹⁰ The general election runoff, including one state House race, is on December 1.^{3, 11}

The size of the House majority is not final. In our count Democrats lead in 92 districts and Republicans in 88. In House District 154 a secretary of state review added 388 votes from a Seminole County memory card that had not been uploaded, and the lead passed to the Republican incumbent; in District 103 the Democrat led by 35 votes, within the margin for a recount. Statewide certification was expected the week of November 16, the Georgia Recorder reported.³