ATLANTA -- Two red counties in metro Atlanta have gone blue in the governor's race based on precincts reporting.
Stacy Abrams took Cobb County with 53 percent of the vote to Kemp's 45. To put that into perspective, Nathan Deal won the county by 14 points in the last gubernatorial election over Democrat Jason Carter. This year, Abrams took many of the counties in the southern parts of Cobb while Kemp was stronger near Cherokee, Bartow and north Fulton counties.
Overall, the Governor's race is still very tight.
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But that wasn't the only metro Atlanta county to shift as votes poured in during the late evening hours. Gwinnett, which carried Deal by 11 points in 2014 shows Abrams with a double-digit lead this year. Kemp still took several precincts in the northern portion of the county. But Abrams performed well in the lower two-thirds.
In both counties, state records all the way back to the 1990 governor's race show both counties pushing for the Republican candidate - even in the races that ultimately named Democrats Zell Miller and Roy Barnes to the top state seat. State records online only go back as far as 1988.
Kemp, however, appears to be leading the state and metro counties further out like Cherokee, Forsyth and Hall all appear to be moving strongly toward Kemp.
It's worth noting that one county that Kemp lost is the same one he cast his ballot in - Clarke. Georgia's smallest county and the home of the University of Georgia voted overwhelmingly for Abrams who had over 70 percent of the vote with most precincts reporting.
