Former President Donald J. Trump won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, according to The New York Times projections, flipping the swing state back to Republicans after Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s landmark victory there in 2020.
Mr. Trump’s victory in the state reaffirmed many conservatives’ beliefs that the Peach State is fundamentally red, despite Democrats’ inroads in recent election cycles. Mr. Trump sees Georgia and another key Sun Belt state, North Carolina, as crucial to his path back to the White House.
He made Georgia the center of his election grievances after losing the 2020 presidential contest, when he fell short by less than 12,000 votes in the state. He falsely claimed that Georgia’s election results were fraudulent after several recounts and pressured two of its most high-profile Republican leaders, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to “find” the votes he did not win. He was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the election results in the state.
But in the last months of the 2024 contest, Mr. Trump largely pushed aside his claims of election fraud in the state, using his more than a half-dozen visits in the final months of the race to urge his voters to cast ballots early instead of questioning the outcome of the last presidential election.
He also formed an alliance with Mr. Kemp, whose well-funded state political operation enlisted paid canvassers to knock on doors for the Republican ticket alongside a network of conservative groups. Mr. Trump’s campaign and its allies also spent nearly $100 million on advertising in the state before Election Day.
Democrats, for their part, spent almost $130 million on the airwaves in Georgia, confident that a win there would blunt Mr. Trump’s path back to the White House.
The post Trump Wins Georgia, Re-establishing Republicans’ Dominance There appeared first on New York Times.
