Over the last thirty years, Georgia’s black population started increasing again, almost doubling from 1.8 million to 3.5 million from 1990 to 2019.  Georgia’s overall population has also been growing briskly, but the Black population is expanding particularly fast, meaning its share has risen from 27% to 33%. The growth has been particularly large in Atlanta and its suburbs, a part of the nation where Biden saw some of his largest gains on Hillary Clinton.

Georgia is appealing to Black Americans for many of the same reasons all types of Americans have been moving to the South. “They want lower cost of living,” Brookings Institution fellow Andre Perry told The Atlanta Voice. “They’re pursuing job opportunities that are sometimes drying up, up North.” Perry also suggests they may find the area appealing because it offers “cultural cohesion,” given the deep roots of the African-American community in the region.

A large share of Black Americans moving to Georgia come from expensive states like New York and California. Their net migration to Georgia from these two states alone averaged over 5,000 per year from 2014 to 2018. Given the narrow margins of the 2020 election, these migrants could have flipped the state to the Democrats.

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