Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast.

I'm Galen Drouk and today we're talking all about Georgia.

In 2020, Georgia found itself at the center of the American political universe.

Georgians handed control of the Senate to Democrats and a pair of dramatic run-offs

and voted for a Democrat for President for the first time in 28 years.

The state also became a target of former President Trump's attempts to overturn the election

and then, in 2022, the stage for a high stakes face-off between competing factions of the

GOP.

Georgia will once again help determine which party controls the Senate this fall.

But just a handful of years ago, Georgia was hardly considered a battleground state.

In 2016, Trump won the state without visiting a single time as the Republican nominee.

So how did Georgia find itself in such a prominent place in American politics?

It's a question that Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Greg Blustein sets out to answer in

his book, Flipped, How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power.

And we're going to discuss it through the lens of three different election cycles, 2018,

2020, and now 2022.

And the answer are all kinds of things we like to focus on here at 538, changing coalitions

and demographics, how campaigns and politicians influence voters, and where our politics are

headed next.

Greg, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Before we get into the details of your book, I just want to ask, you know, what is the

...