ATLANTA, September 21 — Georgia voters still have weeks to decide whether their next governor will be Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms or Republican Rick Jackson, according to reporting by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But one outcome is already settled. For the first time since Democrat Roy Barnes lost in 2002, Georgia’s next governor will be rooted in metro Atlanta.
The result of that vote and other statewide races will cement a transformation decades in the making, shifting Georgia’s political center of gravity away from the rural communities that produced generations of the state’s most powerful leaders and toward Atlanta and its sprawling suburbs. “This is probably just the culmination, not the start or even the middle of a shift,” said Steve Anthony, a longtime deputy of the late Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy and a Georgia State University lecturer.
A century of courthouse power, then a court ruling
For much of the 20th century, Georgia politics ran through rural county-unit systems and courthouse clout that concentrated power in small towns and rural counties. The county-unit system, which gave disproportionate weight to rural counties in Democratic primaries, was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gray v. Sanders in 1963.
The state’s political structure changed again after the 2002 election, when Barnes lost the governor’s race to Sonny Perdue, the first Republican elected governor since Reconstruction. Perdue was followed by fellow Republicans Nathan Deal and Brian Kemp, who were the first Republicans to serve as Georgia governor since Reconstruction.
They were pictured on Jan. 10, 2011, when Deal was sworn in as Georgia’s 82nd governor and Kemp was Georgia’s secretary of state. Even so, Democrats and Republicans alike have long been embedded in rural Georgia. As the AJC reported, both parties have relied on rural strongholds, and the state’s political geography has continued to shift.
Metro Atlanta’s rising weight
Metro Atlanta is now poised to wield more power over Georgia’s politics and policy regardless of who wins in November. The region’s population growth, its share of the state’s electorate, and its role in statewide races have made it the decisive battleground, according to the AJC. The AJC noted that metro Atlanta’s suburban counties, once reliably Republican, have become more competitive, while the city of Atlanta and its inner suburbs remain a Democratic core.
The story also noted that both parties are contesting the region, and that the outcome of the governor’s race and other statewide contests will shape policy on issues including education, transportation, and economic development. The next governor, whether Bottoms or Jackson, will be the first since Barnes to be rooted in metro Atlanta.
The story was published by Politically Georgia, the AJC’s politics vertical, and is part of the outlet’s ongoing coverage of the 2026 election cycle. Its reporting includes a photograph of the Georgia State Capitol dome seen through the windows of the Nathan Deal Judicial Center in June 2026, along with photos of Bottoms at a rally in Atlanta in May and Jackson at a rally in Columbus last month.
The AJC’s central point is that the shift toward Atlanta is not a partisan outcome but a structural one: the state’s population and economic center has moved, and its political power is following. Anthony described the shift as a culmination, not the start or even the middle.
Georgia’s political geography has been transformed by decades of population growth in metro Atlanta, and the region’s influence will only grow, according to the AJC. The November election will test that proposition, but the demographic and political trends, the outlet reported, point in one direction.
