Nearly 4 million early votes cast in Georgia have Republican officials hopeful that they will reclaim the state in the 2024 presidential elections, favoring Donald Trump.
Georgia Republicans are optimistic that early voting trends may overturn the narrow defeat experienced by Donald Trump in the 2020 elections. Fox News reported that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones recently expressed significant enthusiasm about the early voter turnout in Georgia.
Describing the turnout as record-setting, he emphasized that this voting wave was not localized but widespread across the state. His comments align with the Republican effort to increase early voting—a method traditionally dominated by Democrats.
In 2020, Trump narrowly lost Georgia by less than 1%, an unexpected outcome that spurred Republicans to focus heavily on the state for the 2024 race. Recognizing the advantages of early voting, typically a stronghold of Democratic voter strategy, the GOP has been encouraging their constituents to vote ahead of the official November 5 election day this cycle.
Nearly 4 million Georgia residents voted between October 15 and November 1, 2024, which is more than half of the state's registered voters. This substantial early turnout included over 700,000 people who did not vote in the previous presidential election, suggesting a possible shift in voter engagement.
A significant portion of the early voter turnout was seen in the rural counties that Trump won in 2020, aligning with Jones' identification of areas with strong Republican lean.
This rural turnout is critical as these regions showed strong support for Trump in the last elections. Moreover, many of the early voters in 2024 were from areas known as Republican strongholds.
Jones highlighted the fact that many early voters in 2024 had previously voted in 2016 but skipped the 2020 elections. He speculated that these voters returned to the polls with renewed vigor, driven by a belief in Trump's potential victory. "We've got a lot of voters that voted in 2016 but didn't vote in 2020... What makes me believe that they are Trump voters is that most of them are from parts of the state that are pretty strong Republican strongholds," Jones explained.
The demographic makeup of the new early voters showed Hispanics as the largest group, followed by Asian, Black, and White voters. Jones suggested that the enthusiasm for Trump was palpable and could be measured not just in rural voter turnout but also among diverse demographics.
Approximately 72% of the early voters in 2024 also voted early in the 2020 elections, while about 8.3% were Election Day voters in 2020 who opted for early voting this year. This shift indicates a strategic change in the voting patterns encouraged by the party.
Jones expressed optimism, correlating the high turnout with the momentum building around Trump. “It’s been record turnout, something unbelievable—voting from all across the state," Jones told Fox News Digital. "I think the enthusiasm, the momentum, is with President Trump."
Jones also reflected on the past, pondering the impact of complacency on Trump's 2020 campaign. "I'll be honest with you. I think that there are a lot of people who just felt like, you know, the president had the win in the bag in 2020. Sometimes I wonder if that false sense of security might have hurt us back in 2020," he suggested, indicating a renewed push to avoid similar mistakes in this election cycle.
The strategic changes in the Republican approach to voting in Georgia have shown promising early results.
With record-breaking turnout and the participation of new and historically non-voting demographics, there is an anticipation building within the GOP ranks that Trump's bid for the presidency may see a different outcome than in 2020.
Jones's statements and the data on voter turnout provide a glimpse into a highly mobilized Republican base aiming to recover lost ground.
With strong turnout from rural areas and a significant rise in new voters, the landscape of Georgian politics may be shifting as we head closer to election day.