United States presidential election in Georgia, 2016



The 2016 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election, which was held on that day throughout all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

Georgia was won by incumbent President William C. Rutherford (D-Texas) with 58.20% of the popular vote, against Senator Thomas P. Leach (R-Arizona), with 37.91% of the popular vote. This was a victory margin of 20.29%, and was the first time in thirty-two years that a Democrat carried the state by a double-digit margin.

Background
Georgia's electoral trajectory had altered over the preceding century. Between 1876 and 1964, it, like every other former Confederate state, was solidly Democratic. The closest Republicans came to winning Georgia during that period was in 1928, when Herbert Hoover received 43% of the vote against Al Smith, as a result of anti-Catholic backlash that took place throughout the South that year. Otherwise, Democrats never won Georgia by less then a 20 point margin, and Republicans were generally restricted to carrying pro-Unionist counties in the northern, Appalachian regions of the state, where conditions for slavery during the antebellum period had been far less hospitable. In 1964, however, Georgia swung over dramatically to the Republican Party, thanks to intense backlash against the national Democratic Party due to the passage of the Civil Rights Act that year, and the Party's support for other such measures. Barry Goldwater won Georgia over President Lyndon Johnson that year by a margin of 8.25%, becoming the first Republican ever to carry the state.

Georgia subsequently voted for the segregationist Governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace, on his American Independent ticket in 1968, and in 1972, it overwhelmingly backed President Richard Nixon against South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Nixon earned 75% of the vote in Georgia that year, making it his second-best state in the country. Four years later, Georgia had swung dramatically to support native son Jimmy Carter, giving him 67% of the vote even as he narrowly lost the election to incumbent President Gerald R. Ford. In 1980 and 1984, the state was carried by President John Glenn, but by much smaller margins then Carter had. In 1988, it flipped to Senator George H.W. Bush of Texas, even though he lost the election to Vice-President Bruce Babbitt, and supported Republican candidates in every election through 2000. In 2004, Al Gore won the state by a margin of 5.60% against Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri, but in 2008, it had flipped again to the Republicans, with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney carrying it by 16% against Vice-President John Kerry. In 2012, Georgia switched sides again. It was the closest state in the election that year, going for Rutherford by a margin of just 0.59%.

Rutherford campaigned vigorously in the state in 2016, and was helped by the unpopular political stances of his opponent, Senator Leach. Leach's calls for the privatization of Social Security, for cutting medicare, for eliminating rural development, electrification, and flood control programs, and for abolishing the TVA, as well as his railing against federal grants and agricultural subsidies, greatly alienated many among Georgia's electorate. Beginning in July, the President opened up a double-digit lead in the polls against Leach, and by October, Georgia was rated as "Likely Democratic" by most pundits, with Rutherford leading Leach by anywhere between 13 and 20 percentage points.

Vote
As it turns out, Georgia did support President Rutherford decisively, as he won the state by a margin of 834,879 votes, or 20.29%, against Senator Leach. This marked a dramatic improvement from his performance in 2012, as the state shifted 20.88% more Democratic. Georgia still weighed in as 4.91% more Republican then the nation at large, reflecting Republican strength in the Atlanta suburbs, where Leach won Coweta, Cherokee, Forsyth, and Fayette Counties, and denied Rutherford an absolute majority in Gwinnett County. Nevertheless, this was the widest Democratic margin of victory in Georgia since native son Jimmy Carter's triumph here in 1976. Due to Leach's extremely unpopular economic views, especially those concerning the TVA and agricultural subsidies, Rutherford made gains in Appalachian Georgia, long the state's most Republican region. He became the first Democrat to win Towns County since Carter, carrying it with over 60% of the vote. He was the first to carry Gilmer and Pickens Counties since Carter as well, and only the second Democrat ever to win historically pro-Union Fannin County.

Third-party candidates received 3.89% of the vote in Georgia, making this the best state for these candidates nationwide. Libertarian nominee William Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts, received 2.10% of the vote, indicating that a large number of Republican voters, not satisfied with either major-party nominee, had decided to split their tickets this year in an alternative fashion.