ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans are not only celebrating Donald Trump’s re-election – they’re celebrating what they hope is a permanent shift in who votes for Republicans.
Republicans have always leaned on white voters, especially white men, to elect their candidates. Yet it appears Donald Trump got more voters of color into his camp this election.
"I like Trump’s policies. The no taxes on tips, the border, he wants us to get out of war, all of those things that matter to me," Charles Gary of Norcross said Monday, exultant after seeing JD Vance at a rally in Cobb County.
"I’m here to tell everybody, you know, 'the Republican party’s cool. And y'all need to come on over here,"' said Ricardo Williams –when he joined Republicans in Buckhead celebrating Tuesday’s vote totals. Both young Black men say they had been Barack Obama-supporting Democrats who flipped to the GOP.
"Obama is not who young Black men really look up to anymore. He has lost that control," Williams said Tuesday night as Trump's victory was becoming apparent.
CNN exit polling nationally showed Trump had stronger support than he’d had in previous elections among Latino voters and Black men. The exit poll shows Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris among Latino men.
"It’s not a shock at all that an Obama voter would vote for Trump," said Leo Smith, the former minority engagement director for the Georgia Republican party.
If it seems an ideological stretch to support Obama, a Democrat – and then Trump, a Republican – Smith says it’s not.
"Obama had the ability to reach those people in the same way that people who are sitting on the bench, feeling unreached and isolated, were reached by Donald Trump," Smith said.
Gary said he became more serious about politics after Trump entered the scene.
Even when Trump and Obama were going at it, I really wasn’t paying attention like that. But I’m paying attention now because I see the results when I go in the grocery store," Gary said.
Smith – who is a Republican -- says it is Trump and not the Republican Party that deserves the credit for flipping minority voters – enough to perhaps have made a difference in some close states last night.