What Will Happen in Georgia?
ATLANTA—The three dozen young Black men and women who gathered in a church meeting room last Friday night were greeted with a rousing exhortation that had the added benefit of being true.
In welcoming remarks, Bryce Berry, a senior at nearby Morehouse College and the president of the Young Democrats of Georgia club, told the group that none of the party’s national-policy accomplishments of the past two years would have been possible without people like them. “Without young Georgians, young Black Georgians,” Berry said for emphasis, “there would be no Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, no American Rescue Plan … no Inflation Reduction Act, no student-debt relief, and no gun-safety bill.”
It was the sort of thing speakers always say to motivate a crowd at political rallies. But in this case it was historically accurate: Massive turnout and huge margins among young voters, especially young voters of color, were crucial to the twin runoff victories of Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in January 2021 that delivered Democrats their unexpected majority in the upper chamber.
Young adults have become an essential electoral asset for Democrats—and loom as a potentially decisive factor in determining whether the party can avoid the worst outcomes up and down the ballot this
