ATLANTA — Georgia voters turned out to the polls in droves on Election Day, and former President Donald Trump is projected to take the state’s 16 electoral college votes.
The state was called for Trump at 12:58 a.m. on Wednesday morning. With Trump leading Harris by 2.5 percent, Republicans have reclaimed dominance over the state.
At a Georgia Republican Party election night watch party at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta on Tuesday, Georgia Republicans celebrated Trump’s win.
Jackie Ferrari, 22, of Atlanta, who attended the watch party, said she supports Trump because of his policies on immigration and the economy.
“They don’t have the sense that he has and understanding of the economy and how that works,” Ferrari said. “So obviously, Trump’s gonna fight for people who run small businesses and want to create jobs for other people.”
Don Moore, 63, of Atlanta, who voted for Trump on Tuesday, said he supports Trump because he has more conservative ideals, and Moore is a lifelong conservative.
Moore said that while he doesn’t like Trump as a person, he supports his policies.
“I’m not so crazy about him as the man, but I’m a Republican, and I like conservative values,” Moore said. “I like capitalism over socialism, and I just think we’ve gone to a hell in a hand basket these last four years, and I’m hoping he can straighten it back up.”
Georgia was a key factor in Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020 after he eeked out a win in the deep-south state and collected the state’s 16 electors. He won the state’s popular vote by just .23 percentage points, or roughly 11,000 votes.
Georgia was at the center of Trump’s false claims that there was mass voter fraud that led to him losing the 2020 election. Those claims were never proven.
Fairburn, Georgia, a town of 16,000 residents, is located just outside the sprawling Atlanta metropolis. The small town boasts three polling locations including one at First Baptist Church.
Noah Ballard, 30, of Fairburn, Georgia, is voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in this election. He said that the main reason he supports Harris is because of the future he sees under former President Donald Trump. He is worried about the state of democracy under Trump because of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
“What happened on January 6, 2021, was a shame, and we can’t let that happen again,” Ballard said. “And Kamala Harris moves the country forward, fights for the middle class and progressive values, and that aligns with what I’m looking for.”
Abortion is a potent issue for voters in Georgia, which Harris has campaigned heavily on, but it wasn’t enough to squeeze out a win.
Corrtney Collins, 28, of Mableton, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, said that she is voting for Harris because she supports reproductive rights and access to abortion. Collins said she had to have emergency surgery when she was pregnant and that she would have died if it had not been for the protection of Roe v. Wade at the time.
“Honestly, because I thought-read Project 2025, I don’t agree with anything Trump has going on at all,” Collins said. “And especially for me, being a female and a mother, that little portion of abortion rights and everything like that, that really just made me lean to her.”