Atlanta: the packed heart of a swing state
Georgia is the marquee battleground of the last few election cycles: Joe Biden carried it by 12,000 votes in 2020, two Senate runoffs flipped control of Washington in 2021, and it stayed a national tipping-point state in 2024. Whoever draws metro Atlanta's lines is drawing the seat of that fight.
Atlanta's Democratic vote, heavily Black and concentrated in the city and its inner suburbs, is packed into the 5th District, the seat John Lewis held for 33 years, which runs about 85 percent Democratic. The 2021 Republican map then cracked the diversifying northern suburbs, redrawing the 6th to erase a Democratic seat, while a federal court ruled under the Voting Rights Act that the state had to draw an additional majority-Black district.
You are playing the Republicans, running the 2021 map. Pack Atlanta's Democratic voters into as few seats as you can and crack the blue-trending suburbs, so a minority of the vote holds a majority of the districts.
Biden 49.5%, Trump 49.2%. Georgia's 2020 presidential vote: a margin of 11,779 votes.
Metro Atlanta, 2016 vote. The 5th packs the city at 88 percent Democratic; the suburban seats hold thin Republican margins.