Democrats Could Not Have Stolen Georgia If Trump Had Retained His White Vote Share

By Jack Dalton

12/30/2020

Earlier: Georgia To Bill Kristol: Demography IS Destiny — Let’s Do Something About It!

Georgia’s two U.S. Senate run-off elections will be held January 5, and as of late December 30 the Real Clear Politics averages show both Democrat challengers slightly ahead — here and here. (However, VDARE.com’s friendly political consultant Patrick McDermott thinks that such close polls will translate to GOP victories, because of the “shy Republican” tendency he correctly diagnosed before the 2020 Presidential election). But although evidence mounts that something strange did indeed happen in Georgia on election night 2020, a deep-dive on the white vote alone shows that, although immigration policy is certainly moving the Peach State left, there’s still plenty of room for the GOP/GAP to win by mobilizing the white vote — what VDARE.com has long called “The Sailer Strategy.” In 2020, however, Trump just didn’t do it.

Georgia went from being a 72% white state in 1990 to barely above 50% white in 2020. The racial change in the electorate and its consequences are obvious to those brave enough to engage in pattern recognition:

Brian Robinson, a longtime Republican strategist, said he’s seen Democratic gains coming for a decade in Georgia, if for no other reason than the state’s changing demographics.

“The white percentage of the electorate is now 53%. In the Sonny Perdue years, it was 70 plus percent,” he said of the two-term governor, who served in the 2000s. "I mean, that’s that is mind boggling demographic change in a very short period of time.”

[How Georgia became an election battleground in 2020 — and 2021, By Greg Bluestein, AJC.com, November 7, 2020]

In 1990, Georgia was 70 percent white and 26.9 percent black. In 2000, it was 63.2 percent white, 28.9 percent black, 5.4 percent Hispanic, and 2.3 Asian. In 2010, it was 56.6 percent white, 30.8 percent black, 8.8 percent Hispanic, and 3.5 Asian in 2010. [Map: Demographic patterns in every Georgia county, 1990-2050, AJC.com, by Saurabh Datar, April 27, 2017] In 2020 According to the Census, as of 2019, the percent of the population that is non-Hispanic white is down to 52%. In 2020, Biden is supposed to have defeated Trump with 49.5% of the vote to 49.3%. [Georgia Presidential Election Results 2020, ABC News, accessed December 30, 2020]

Thus Biden’s victory was extremely narrow — less than 12,000 votes.

In contrast, in 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by getting 51% of the vote, well north of a 100,000-vote victory [Georgia Election Results 2016, CNN Politics, accessed December 30, 2020].

And in 2018, Brian Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams in the Governor’s race by just over 54,000 votes, getting 50.2% of the vote to her 48.8%. [Georgia governor election results 2018, accessed December 30, 2020]

This stunning Great Replacement happening in Georgia shows us that demography is indeed destiny. As the non-white vote increases (40 percent of votes cast in 2016, down slightly to 39 percent in 2020), the higher the share of the white vote the GOP will need to get to be competitive in state-wide elections.

But what happened with the white vote from 2016 to 2018 to 2020 made the narrow Biden victory possible (excluding fraud, which does seem to have occurred in heavily black counties such as Fulton and DeKalb).

In 2016, Trump took in 75 percent of the white vote. White men cast 80 percent of their ballots for him and white women 70 percent. College-educated whites cast 69 percent of their votes for Trump and non-college educated whites an astonishing 81 percent. White college educated women cast 63 percent of their votes for Trump, as did 76 percent of white college educated men; non-college educated white women gave Trump 78 percent of their votes, with non-college white males going 85 percent for Trump in 2016.

That is why Trump won with 51% of the vote in 2016.

Non-whites were 40 percent of vote in 2016, going 83 percent of their votes for Clinton. Blacks, making up 30% of the electorate, went 89% for Clinton. [Exit Polls 2016, accessed December 30, 2020]

But what happened in 2020? Amazingly, Trump saw a 19 percent increase in his total number of votes, to 2,461,854 from 2,068,623 in 2016. But he lost ground, slightly but significantly, among white voters.

In 2020, Trump took 69 percent of the white vote, vs.75% in 2016. White men cast 72 percent of their ballots for him and white women 67 percent. College educated whites cast 55 percent of their votes for Trump and non-college educated whites 79 percent. (CNN did not break out the numbers of non-college whites versus college educated whites via gender in 2020.)

But you can see clearly:

• Trump dropped 6 points in his share of white vote in 2020 versus 2016.
• Trump dropped 8 points in his share of the white male vote in 2020 versus 2016.
• Trump dropped 3 points in his share of the total white female vote in 2020 versus 2016.
• Trump dropped 14 points in his share of the college educated white vote in 2020 versus 2016.
• Trump dropped just 2 points in his share of the total non-college educated white vote in 2020 versus 2016.

Note that, contrary to the widespread impression, Trump lost relatively little ground with white working-class voters and with white women. The losses were with college-educated whites and with white men.

For those keeping score at home, Brian Kemp won 74 percent of the white vote in the 2018 governor’s race with Abrams, 73% of the white male vote, 75% of the white female vote, 59% of the college educated white vote, 82% of the non-college educated white vote, 57% of the white college educated female vote, 60% of the white college educate male vote, 83% of the non-college educate male vote, and 81% of the non-college educated female vote.

Abrams ran an explicitly anti-white campaign, even announcing she would sandblast off the Confederate monuments from Stone Mountain ISIS-style if elected. [Abrams calls for removal of Confederate faces off Stone Mountain, by Greg Bluestein, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 15, 2017]

Here are the results in tabular form:

It’s the racial changes in the Metro Atlanta counties that are driving the electoral changes in the state. [Sweeping racial and ethnic change ahead for metro Atlanta, by Richard Halicks, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 27, 2017

Metro Atlanta consists of the Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, Gwinnett, Rockdale, Henry, Fayette, and Douglas.

The city of Atlanta is in both Fulton and DeKalb County, with the other seven counties representing areas where white flight progressed after blacks took control of the city government in 1973.

In 1980, Cobb, Clayton, Gwinnett, Rockdale, Fayette, and Douglas County all were more than 90 percent white, with Gwinnett boasting a population that was 96.6% white and Fayette County at 95% white.

DeKalb County was 71.3% white.

In 2018, every metro Atlanta county has not only seen its white percentage of the population drop, but in many cases the drop has been nothing short of catastrophic.

In 1980, Clayton County was 91.7% white and in 2018, the same county is 11.2% white.

Dekalb County was 71.3% white in 1980, but is now 29.5% white.

Gwinnett went from 96 percent white in 1980 to 38 percent white in 2018. It was also a reliably Republican county, going for Ronald Reagan and George Bush in 1980, 1984 and 1988, and going as high as 65 percent for George W. Bush in 2004, when the county was still roughly 68 percent white, before finally flipping blue in 2016, with only 45 percent of the vote going for Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump only got 40.2 percent of the vote in Gwinnett.

Douglas County was 94.3% white in 1980, but is now 44.7% white. The black population, 5.7% of the county in 1980, is 43.6% today.

Rockdale County was 90.4% white in 1980, but is now just 35.6% white in 2018. Conversely, the black population grew from 9.6% in 1980 to 51.1% black in 2018.

Fayette County is the only metro Atlanta county still with a sizable white majority, but it has dropped from 95% white in 1980 to 65.2% white today.

With this racial change, came a change in the political climate as well.

The only county Brian Kemp carried in metro Atlanta was Fayette, where he won 56.5% of the votes. Trump won Fayette with 58 percent of the vote in 2016, but barely carried it in 2020 with 52.7 percent.

Abrams won Fulton with 73% of the votes, DeKalb with 83%, Clayton with 87%, Cobb with 54%, and Gwinnett with 56.5% of the vote.

In 2020, Biden performed better than Clinton had in 2016 in every Metro Atlanta county, save Clayton.

In this heavily black county, Trump increasing from 13.2% in 2016 to 14.1% in 2020 is interesting but not much to show for the disaster of Jared Kushner’s Platinum Plan, which unquestionably alienated some whites.

As Metro Atlanta become more and more racially diverse, white people move further and further away from downtown Atlanta, seeking whitopian communities to raise their children.

Case in point: Coweta County, the recipient of white flight from all over Metro Atlanta. [Elected officials missing the point…or maybe just making another point, The Newnan Times-Herald, August 18, 2020]

(The first three seasons of the wildly-popular The Walking Dead series (featuring a zombie apocalypse )largely take place in Coweta County, with downtown Senoia, Georgia the fortified city where the infamous Governor-character lords over in Season Three.)

This white flight county went for Trump in 2016 with 69.3% of the votes (42, 512) cast [2016 Georgia Presidential Election Results, December 13, 2016.]. In 2020, Trump again carried the county by wide margins over Biden, getting 67% of the votes cast (51,501). This was a 21 percent increase in the number of votes cast for Trump [Live election map: Georgia county results, by Emily Merwin DiRico, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 21, 2020]

Moral of the story? Joe Biden won the state of Georgia by less than 12,000 votes. And “won” does need an asterisk by it. But it is obvious by the exit poll data that Trump missed out on a true landslide victory not holding (let alone increasing) his share of the vote from 2016 to 2020.

Speculate on the reasons all you want, but dropping 14 percent with college educated whites and six percent with whites from 2016 to 2020 was why this Georgia race was even close enough to be potentially stolen.

The good news: the GOP/Generic American Party can win Georgia simply by getting back to Trump’s 2016 white share, and more. And Joe Biden’s new Woke Democrats might well help them.

Jack Dalton is a recovering conservative.

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