According to a New York Times estimate, former President Donald J. Trump won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, returning the swing state to Republicans following Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s historic triumph in 2020.
Mr. Trump’s victory in Georgia bolstered many conservatives’ perception that the state remains fundamentally red, despite Democratic gains in recent elections. Mr. Trump sees Georgia and another major Sun Belt state, North Carolina, as critical to his return to the White House.
He focused his election criticisms on Georgia after losing the 2020 presidential race by less than 12,000 votes. He erroneously claimed that Georgia’s election results were illegitimate after repeated recounts and pressed two of the state’s most prominent Republican officials, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to “find” the votes he did not receive. He was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the state’s election results.
However, in the last months of the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump mostly ignored his charges of election fraud in the state, using his more than a half-dozen visits to encourage his voters to vote early rather than disputing the outcome of the previous presidential election.
He also developed an alliance with Mr. Kemp, whose well-funded state political operation employed hired canvassers to knock on doors for the Republican ticket, as well as a network of conservative organizations. Mr. Trump’s team and its allies also spent about $100 million in advertising in the state prior to Election Day.
Democrats, for their part, spent about $130 million on the airwaves in Georgia, hoping that a victory would stymie Mr. Trump’s road back to the presidency. Democrats finally made major gains in the areas surrounding Atlanta, Georgia’s largest city. In Henry County, southeast of Atlanta, Ms. Harris outperformed Mr. Biden by more than 9 percentage points in 2020.
Republicans made gains in every other region of the state, including Democratic strongholds in counties surrounding big towns like Macon, Augusta, and Savannah. Mr. Trump increased his lead in Clarke County, which includes Athens, by four points. Mr. Trump even gained ground in several areas of Atlanta, including DeKalb and Fulton counties, where the former president was arrested on racketeering charges last year.
