Georgia’s biggest counties are still adding the largest numbers of voter records.
But measured against the size of each county’s existing electorate, a different map emerges.
Long County, a small southeast Georgia county with just over 14,000 registered voters, had the largest share among Georgia counties with at least 10,000 voters: 5.8% of voters on its current roll had records created in 2026, according to a PeachPol analysis of Georgia’s statewide voter file through Sept. 8.
Liberty County followed at 4.6%, while Dougherty and Dade counties each topped 4%. In Camden County, 3.7% of the current voter file had been created this year.
The analysis comes as one national voter-registration organization reports a late surge in registration activity ahead of Georgia’s Oct. 5 deadline, according to the organization.
Vote.org said Georgians used its voter-registration tool at more than seven times its normal rate from Sept. 29 through Oct. 2, while registration checks rose to nearly five times normal levels. The organization said 19,550 Georgians had used its tools to register this year through Oct. 2, 32% more than at the same point in 2022.
Those figures reflect activity through Vote.org, not all voter registrations statewide.
The PeachPol analysis looks at a different question: where Georgia’s newest voter records are showing up.
Big counties lead in raw numbers
By sheer volume, metro Atlanta still dominates.
Fulton County had 26,821 current voters whose records were created in 2026, the highest total in the state. Gwinnett had 20,466, while DeKalb had 15,219 and Cobb had 13,108.
But those records represented about 3.1% of Fulton and Gwinnett’s current voter files, 2.6% of DeKalb’s and 2.3% of Cobb’s.
That distinction matters.
Raw numbers show where the most voter records have been created. Looking at new records as a share of the existing roll shows where relatively recent additions make up an unusually large piece of the electorate.
In Long County, 817 of the county’s 14,163 current registered voters had records created this year. Nearly 2,900 — more than 20% of the county’s voter file — had records created since 2024.
Liberty County had 2,115 records created this year among 45,722 current voters, while almost 9,000 of its current voter records were created since 2024.
Dougherty County stands out despite being considerably larger. Of its more than 66,000 current registered voters, 2,813 had records created in 2026 — about 4.2% of the roll.
Chattahoochee County had an even higher percentage: 5.3% of its current voter file was created this year and nearly one-quarter since 2024. But with fewer than 5,000 registered voters, relatively small numerical changes can produce large percentage swings.
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For that reason, PeachPol considered both raw totals and percentages rather than using either measure alone.
A different pattern from 2022
PeachPol also compared the first eight-plus months of 2026 with the same period in 2022, the previous gubernatorial election year.
That comparison again highlighted several counties outside Georgia’s largest population centers.
Ware County had 747 current voters whose records were created between Jan. 1 and Sept. 8 this year, compared with 417 whose records were created during the same stretch in 2022 — a roughly 79% increase.
Toombs County’s comparable total rose nearly 69%, from 307 to 518. Tattnall increased about 51%, Peach nearly 50%, Dade about 49% and Long about 45%.
The largest numerical increases were more mixed.
Gwinnett had 541 more current voters with records created during the Jan. 1-Sept. 8 period this year than during the same period in 2022. Richmond County had 472 more, Dougherty 471 more, Liberty 458 more and Floyd 426 more.
Fulton, despite having the largest number of 2026-created records, was almost unchanged from four years earlier: 26,821 current voters had records created during the period this year, compared with 26,722 from the same stretch in 2022.
Several large metro and exurban counties moved in the opposite direction.
Cobb had 13,108 current voters whose records were created between Jan. 1 and Sept. 8 this year, down from 14,883 during that period in 2022 — a decline of about 12%. Forsyth was down nearly 13%, Cherokee nearly 8% and Newton more than 22%.
DeKalb was essentially flat, with 15,219 compared with 15,269 four years earlier.
Those differences do not necessarily mean fewer people are moving into those counties or that voter-registration efforts have slowed. The data shows when current voter records were created, not why.
Check your voter registration status at mvp.ga.sos.gov
What “created” means
Georgia’s voter file contains both a “Voter Created Date” and a “Registration Date.”
For this analysis, PeachPol used the voter-created date — the date a person’s voter record was first established in Georgia’s system.
The registration-date field can change when an existing voter updates registration information, such as after moving. A longtime Georgia voter who changes counties may therefore have a recent registration date while retaining an older voter-created date.
That makes the voter-created field useful for identifying people who entered Georgia’s voter system more recently instead of people who simply updated an existing record.
It is still important to distinguish them from first-time voters. A record first created in Georgia in 2026 does not establish whether that person previously registered or voted in another state.
What the data can — and cannot — tell us
Vote.org’s late spike suggests registration interest remains high as the election approaches. But its figures cover only people using Vote.org’s tools and should not be read as a statewide count.
Likewise, the Georgia voter file shows where recently created records are concentrated, but it cannot explain what is driving the differences.
Population growth, people moving into Georgia, younger residents entering the electorate, organized registration campaigns and other factors could all contribute. The voter file alone cannot separate those effects.
The historical comparison also comes with an important limitation.
PeachPol analyzed the current voter file, not an archived statewide file from 2022. The 2022 figures therefore count voters whose records were created that year and who remain on the current file. They do not reconstruct every person who was registered four years ago.
Still, the data shows something that statewide raw totals can obscure: Georgia’s newest voter records are not concentrated only in metro Atlanta.
Some of the largest shares are appearing in smaller counties across south and coastal Georgia — places where newer registrations now make up a noticeably larger piece of the electorate than they do in some of the state’s biggest counties.
Methodology: PeachPol analyzed Georgia’s statewide voter-registration file through Sept. 8, 2026. The analysis counted current registered voters by county and grouped them according to the date their voter record was first created in Georgia’s system. PeachPol calculated 2026-created records as a share of each county’s current voter file and separately compared records created between Jan. 1 and Sept. 8, 2026, with records created during the same period in 2022. Because the historical analysis uses the current voter file, it includes only voters whose records remain on the file today. Vote.org figures cited in this story were supplied by the organization and reflect activity through its own voter-registration and registration-check tools, not statewide registration totals.
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