Trump wins Georgia, a key victory in the hotly contested purple state
- Donald Trump has won the state of Georgia.
- Georgia, one of the most heavily contested states this year, has 16 electoral votes.
Former President Donald Trump has won Georgia, according to CNN and NBC News. It's a state that in recent years has shifted from a Republican stronghold to a politically competitive Southern battleground.
The Peach State victory is a major win for Trump. Both major-party presidential campaigns spent considerable time in Georgia, rallying voters in metropolitan Atlanta and stumping for votes in the rest of the state, notably in the Augusta, Columbus, and Savannah areas.
Trump focused on turning out his rural base, but he also held rallies in Atlanta in hopes of chipping away at Vice President Kamala Harris' advantage in the region. But Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, campaigned heavily in the Atlanta and Savannah areas. And the Democratic ticket also campaigned in South Georgia, an agriculture-heavy region where the GOP had dominated for years.
Georgia over the past decade has changed in significant ways.
The Republican Brian Kemp won the 2018 gubernatorial race, but a Democrat, Stacey Abrams, came within 2 points of victory, shocking many in the political world. It was a major sign that the GOP's long-standing grip on the state was loosening.
In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Trump in the state, eclipsing the Republican by almost 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million ballots cast. In the dual 2021 Senate runoff elections, the Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their races, which delivered the Senate majority to the Democratic Party.
Ossoff won a full six-year term, but Warnock's election was a special election to fill the expiring term of the Republican Johnny Isakson.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Warnock defeated the GOP candidate Herschel Walker, securing a full six-year term in the Senate.