Kamala didn’t just discover Chatham County. Yesterday was her second visit to Savannah this yeah. Despite the silly impression you might have gotten from the corporate media, Kamala and Biden beat Trump in Chatham Co. 4 years ago— by a lot: 58.6% to 39.9%. Hillary won the county too, so did Obama (both times) and so did John Kerry. It’s solidly Democratic. With the exception of Liberty (Biden took 61.3% of the vote there), the rural counties around it, however, aren’t. McIntosh, Long, Bryan, Effingham, Evans and Bulloch counties each gave Trump over 60% of their votes. But Chatham has more voters than the half dozen Trump counties combined.
In his successful Senate campaign, Raphael Warnock proved investing in southeast Georgia is a good idea— goosing the Democratic base in Chatham and Liberty counties and losing by less in the adjacent red counties— despite weird headlines like Democrats are chasing a high-risk, high-reward strategy in Georgia. Myah Ward reported that it’s “a part of the state Democrats at the top of the ticket have long ignored in the final stretch to Election Day,” since the Atlanta metro has so many more Democratic voters and turnout there is seen as determining elections for Democrats.
Ward wrote that Kamala’s “campaign isn’t just relying on metro Atlanta’s bluest counties, a strategy that speaks to the lessons gleaned from President Joe Biden’s ultra slim victory in 2020, when he flipped the swing state by less than 12,000 votes. If Democrats want to win Georgia again, they also must continue to improve their margins in the state’s urban, suburban and rural areas outside the perimeter, too, particularly among Black and working class voters. It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy, returning to the trail after the convention to visit a state many Democrats feared was out of reach in recent months. And with roughly two months until Election Day, Harris and Walz are in a race to try to make up for lost time. Trump has campaigned in Atlanta, but also outside the metro area in places like Rome, Dalton, Commerce and Valdosta... Harris’ bus tour will mark her seventh trip to the state this year. She held a rally in Atlanta earlier this month, featuring Megan Thee Stallion, her first as the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. And the campaign has seen a groundswell of momentum since Harris launched, with more than 35,000 volunteers joining since she announced her campaign. They also have almost 50 full-time staff across seven offices in southern Georgia, including in Valdosta, which Trump carried in 2020.” As far as I've been able to tell today, the bus only ventured into the two blue counties, Chatham and Liberty. Maybe I missed something.
Anyway, that report about Valdosta must be a mistake. Trump couldn’t have won Valdosta, which is just 34% white, although he did take Lowndes County, in which it’s located, with 55.4% of the vote. In 2020, Trump won 25,692 votes county-wide and Biden took 20,116. Jiggling that around so that Trump wins 23,000 and Kamala wins 21,000 is worth the effort and investment. Again: losing these places by less, while running up the big numbers in Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Henry and Douglas counties in the Atlanta Metro, plus Richmond (Augusta), Bibb (Macon), Muscogee (Columbus) and Clarke (Athens) is the path to victory for Democrats. Cutting down GOP margins in counties Biden won, in big red counties like Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall, Paulding, Houston and Fayette and even in small rural counties where every vote counts is a worthwhile strategy. Burke, Peach, Mitchell, Early, Twiggs, Webster and Dooly counties are all flippable. But flipping them isn’t what it’s all about; winning raw votes is though. Kamala needs to turn out Black voters in rural parts of the state who have been ignored Almost a quarter of the residents in rural Georgia counties are Black.
The same strategy— working the margins— is viable in North Carolina and Pennsylvania… and can make the difference between winning and losing nationally. In 2020, Biden and Josh Shapiro, then running for Attorney General, were both on the ballot. Shapiro won more votes than Biden did and took 50.9% compared to Biden’s 50.0%.
Erie County (Biden- 49.8%, Shapiro- 51.9%)
Allegheny County (Biden- 59.4%, Shapiro- 62.2%)
Luzerne County (Biden- 42.3%, Shapiro- 48.8%)
Berks County (Biden- 45.2%, Shapiro- 45.7%)
Beaver County (Biden- 40.5%, Shapiro- 46.5%)
Mercer County (Biden- 36.4%, Shapiro- 37.7%)
That’s just half a dozen pretty random counties but you can see how margins start to build. The next time Shapiro was on the ballot— two years later running for governor— he won with 56.5%, out-performing Biden’s 2020 win massively. Fetterman was on the ballot that day as well and he also out-performed Biden, winning 51.2%, by doing exactly what Kamala is doing— juicing the base while investing in losing by less in red counties.
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