A small county in Georgia could serve as an indication of which way the state will swing in the presidential election, according to NBC News correspondent Steve Kornacki.
The state, which Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, is worth 16 Electoral College votes and ranks alongside North Carolina as the most crucial battleground after Pennsylvania. Georgia will be one of the first to close its polls at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday and, according to several polls including those from FiveThirtyEight and The Hill, former President Donald Trump is holding onto a narrow lead over Kamala Harris in the Peach State.
According to Kornacki, a new state law in the state means that 80 percent of the entire vote will be tallied and reported within the first hour after polls close.
“If it goes to plan, we are going to get a ton of votes in Georgia very fast,” he said.
However, Kornacki said that the results could hinge on what he called “the Blue blob”—counties in the Atlanta metro area won by Biden in 2020. He said that these areas, which constitute “more than 40 percent” of the total state vote, are “growing very fast, they are diversifying and they are becoming more and more Democratic.”
“The question—one of the tells for me tonight—is going to be: is the Blue blob getting bigger,” Kornacki said, adding that one county in particular, Fayette County, would be a litmus test for this change.
Fayette County, which has a population of around 122,000, sits on the edge of the Atlanta metropolitan area, and was won by Trump in 2020 with a margin of 52.7 percent to Biden’s 45.9.
However, Kornacki said that the county has been “getting close for Democrats,” with Republican victories in Fayette shrinking every cycle since Mitt Romney secured it over Barack Obama by 65.0 percent to 33.7 percent in 2012.
Kornacki said that the shift, from nearly 2:1 splits to mere single digits, “typifies what we talk about in the suburbs, with high educational attainment [voters] all around the country moving away from Trump’s Republican Party.”
According to Data USA, citing Census Bureau data, education attainment has been rising in Fayette County, with the percentage of those obtaining bachelor’s degrees or higher rising from 19.8 in 2014 to 24.25 in 2022.
“If Kamala Harris and the Democrats are getting what they want out of Georgia tonight, if they’re having a good night, [Fayette] is going to turn Blue tonight,” Kornacki said. “If it doesn’t turn Blue, that is an achievement for Trump.”
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