Looking at the polls from the key battleground state of Georgia in the months before the US election, it should perhaps be no surprise that Donald Trump prevailed in the Peach State. His lead over Kamala Harris was small but persistent from August onwards.
Why, then, does it feel like a shock here in the state capital, Atlanta, where I was based for the week of the election? The city is heavily Democratic, even in the affluent suburbs, and is teeming with signs reading: “Harris, obviously.” When Harris visited the city the weekend before polling day, the crowd was packed in and energised, anticipating a win for America’s first female president.
Enclaves like Atlanta are a familiar sight on the electoral maps of the US, and they tell a story of the Democratic party’s struggle to make inroads with white, working class and rural America. Joe Biden’s victory in the state in 2020 now looks like an anomaly that the Democrats were hoping was the start of a trend.
