Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mike Collins and Burt Jones are different candidates, but they had one thing in common in the May 19 primary.
Look at maps of where the candidates won the largest shares of votes – and each of them shows up strong outside metro Atlanta.
By contrast, each has a donut hole in parts of Atlanta and north Georgia where support is lower.
It’s a truism in state politics that there are two Georgias, and in each case that other Georgia outside Atlanta preferred the frontrunner more strongly. The pattern shows how less populated parts of Georgia still shape the state’s politics decades after the demise of legal structures and a political culture that catered to white rural voters. That influence decides nominees, shapes campaign messages and guides what state government prioritizes.
“You have two political Georgias, just as you have two economic Georgias,” said Charlie Hayslett, an author who’s writing a book about the socioeconomic divide between metro Atlanta and the rest of the state — what he calls “Notlanna.”
Outsize power for ‘outstate’ primary voters
The general election battlefield is likely to be in suburban Atlanta, the main home of the sliver of the Georgia electorate that swings from Democrat to Republican. Those are the people who voted for both GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2022.
But outstate voters were instrumental in giving Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, the Democratic nomination for governor. They could also elevate Jones, the current lieutenant governor, to be Bottoms’ GOP opponent. And they could back Collins, a current congressman, to oppose Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
Atlanta voters have different preferences.
Democratic voters in Fulton and DeKalb counties cast 30% of all Democratic primary ballots statewide. If it had been up to them, Bottoms would be headed to a runoff with former state Sen. Jason Esteves. Bottoms’ 33 best counties were outside the core of Atlanta. She also rolled up big numbers in some key Democratic suburbs, winning more than two-thirds of the vote in Henry, Douglas and Clayton counties.
On the Republican side, Atlanta-area voters are less Trumpy than their counterparts elsewhere in the state. Republican Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Trump foes, did much better around Atlanta and Athens during their failed gubernatorial runs.
Metro Atlanta’s big counties cast huge numbers of votes. But candidates can also roll up big numbers when they stack up lots of rural counties. Jones built most of his overall lead over healthcare billionaire Rick Jackson in Georgia’s 110 lightest-voting counties. Jones won less than 32% of the vote in Cobb County, which as usual contributed the most Republican votes. But he won 45% of the vote in the 110 lightest-voting counties. In his home of Butts County, as well as a handful of counties along the Florida state line, Jones crossed 60%
In the Republican Senate race, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter dominated his home region of coastal Georgia on the way to a third-place finish. But Collins was strong in middle and south Georgia, as well as a strip of counties along the Tennessee state line near Chattanooga.
Collins deliberately focused his limited dollars outside the expensive Atlanta TV market, Brandon Phillips said in the days before the primary. Collins cut public ties with Phillips, a Republican political operative, after the primary because of an offensive social media post.
The success of front–runners outside Atlanta may also reflect the continuing power of face-to-face politics in rural Georgia.
“There were a lot of people out there doing retail politics, because they didn’t have the money to be on television,” said Jay Morgan, a former executive director of the Georgia Republican Party.
How identity and came recognition helped Bottoms
Data suggests Bottoms benefitted from being a Black woman, as well as superior name recognition in what was a low-spending primary.
Spencer Goidel, a political scientist at Auburn University, said voters are often “looking for shortcuts,” especially when they’re deciding between primary or nonpartisan candidates and party affiliation can’t guide their choices. Bottoms may have also benefited from her association with Democratic President Joe Biden, even being briefly considered as a possible 2020 vice presidential pick, especially among voters without direct knowledge of her mayoral record.
“People elsewhere in the state just hear the name and go, ‘Well, I mean, she was floated as a VP pick, so she must be good, right?’” Goidel said.
Goidel also provided an analysis exclusively to PeachPol showing that from 2012 through 2026, Georgia Democrats showed a voting preference for women in their party primaries. Across 269 contested primaries, candidates with female-coded names typically won a vote share 10 to 18 percentage points higher, while male candidates performed worse.
There’s no clear advantage just for candidates who have names that appear to be Black. But Goidel found that in multi-candidate Democratic primaries, candidates whose names signal they are both Black and female get a boost stronger than just what female or Black candidates get.
“That finding fits the intuition that voters rely more heavily on name-based cues when the ballot is crowded and information is scarce,” Goidel said. He said other research shows voters interpret both female and nonwhite candidates as more liberal and Democratic primary voters may be seeking the most liberal candidates.
What rural voting power means
Voters can even hear the influence of rural voters – listen to the country music at a Republican event. But it also spills over into a party that can be very conservative. Georgia Republicans who contend in swing urban and suburban districts are a lot more moderate in tone, and sometimes in policy, than Republicans in safe seats.
The influence is more subtle on the Democratic side, but it’s there. Bottoms speaks frequently of her family and Christian faith, a message that may appeal to more religious rural voters. And Warnock, a Baptist minister whose campaigns portray him as affable and nonthreatening, has achieved the strongest Democratic performances in rural Georgia in recent times.
Rural influence also translates to a Republican-controlled state government more responsive to the crises outside Atlanta. Consider that the state is building a new dental school in Savannah and its first optometry school in Statesboro. Those decisions are driven by a shortage of healthcare providers in rural Georgia, and also by lawmakers mostly from outside Atlanta who control the purse strings.
“Rural Georgia has dominated state politics for my entire life — first rural Democrats and now rural Republicans,” Hayslett said. “For most of that time, that was purely a function of population; there were just more people outside Atlanta and outside the other urban areas. In recent years, especially as population growth has concentrated in and around Atlanta, rural areas have had to compensate by turning out to vote in higher numbers, and they’ve generally done that — and they’ve voted overwhelmingly Republican.”
Hayslett, though, has detailed how rural Georgia has floundered socioeconomically even as political power has remained in the hands of people from outside Atlanta.
“Again, I think your question is one rural voters should be pondering and asking the representatives they keep in power,” Hayslett said. “What good has it done them to keep sending them to Atlanta?”
