In a rapidly changing Georgia, turnout is breaking records, but who is showing up to vote?

Poll worker Mattie Norman, left, helps Deborah Wood fill out paperwork as Gwinnett County voters wait in lines to cast their ballots for the general election at the Shorty Howell Park Activity Building in Duluth, Ga., on the last day of early voting on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. “That tells me that what we’ve been saying all along is true: Georgia is America’s newest battleground state,” said Ufot, the executive director of the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan group founded by Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, to register and engage voters. “Black voters are key to Democratic success in the South.” Typically, Bullock said, a Democrat who needs to win a statewide race in Georgia must follow the “30-30” rule: increase Black voter turnout to 30% of the electorate and win at least 30% of the white vote. “The turnout is a real testament to how determined people are to have their voices heard even despite all the barriers they face.” Still, some political data experts say that as the state’s demographics shift, Black voters don’t necessarily have to make up 30% of the vote if Democrats can capture a higher number of suburban college-educated whites and drum up more votes from the tiny but surging Hispanic and Asian populations. “While people obsess about the fabled Obama-Trump supporters, there were 100 million Americans who were eligible to vote but didn’t vote in 2016.” In the last six years, the New Georgia Project has registered about 450,000 Black, Latino, Asian American and young voters.