People are starstruck about “the Abrams model”, without looking underneath the hood about what was/is actually happening in GA.
First off, lets talk about demographics. The state of Georgia has actually lost millions of people in the past 10 years, but the Atlanta metro area has grown by leaps and bounds. That alone is an extremely powerful dynamic for Democrats that cannot be overstated.
Secondly, besides Georgia trending blue, similarly to AZ, over the past several cycles, it really hasn’t been all that long since Dems had a lock on the state. About 20 years, which sounds long, but Dems had a lock on it for close to 100 before that. So its not a dramatic ideological shift for middle of the road voters.
Thirdly, when you compare GA to states like AR, well…Dems DO get elected in Georgia, before 2020. They don’t anymore in AR. As I just posted, AR has a super majority in both houses of their state legislature, a complete republican representation to the Senate and the House of Reps, and every statewide officer is a republican.
Lastly, and this circles back to the first point, AR doesn’t have an “Atlanta”. And by that I mean a large, heavily Democratic population center to counter rest of the more rural and smaller city republican areas. Little Rock just isn’t that big.
Now, even with all these underlying trends, Abrams still lost in 2018, despite it being wave year, even in Georgia. So she set out to change the elecorate by focusing on registering Democratic leaning demographics: POC, young people, etc. And the result was we narrowly won 2 Senate seats.
So, don’t get me wrong, I think Abrams is an amazing woman and political talent. I’ve thought that for years. And I recognize her work over the past 2 years. But merely registering voters isn’t going to magically flip every deep red state. There are a lot of factors that were required to be in play, that were out of her control. And most of those factors don’t exist in Arkansas.