That Was Close! 3 Things to Know About Atlantas Wild Mayoral Race
The next four years of leadership for Atlanta, one of the fastest-growing, wealthiest and culturally important cities in America, will likely stay in the hands of an African American, thanks to a nail-biting election Tuesday night. The race between Councilwomen Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood was tighter than a pair of skinny jeans at Atlantic Station.
With over 90,000 votes cast, Bottoms appears to be the winner by just 759 votes. However, that’s not even the biggest surprise from a race that suddenly jumped into national attention over the last few weeks. Here are three fast facts you need to know about what happened in
Atlanta last night.
1. Race rules everything around me.
People in Atlanta said it, political analysts outside the city said it and a racist viewer of CBS Atlanta made it abundantly clear last night: Race was the driving force in the Atlanta elections. Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University, laid out the election results in plain black and white.
“The north was racially polarized voting; there is still a racially polarized ... North-South divide that still holds in the city. That demographic-change question going into the future is looking at East Atlanta and Southwest Atlanta, that are gentrifying,” she told The Root.
A simple look at the electoral map makes it clear: The northern, whiter parts of Atlanta voted Norwood; the southern, blacker parts of Atlanta voted for Lance Bottoms. It’s also worth noting that Bottoms was the default Democrat in the nonpartisan race and Norwood was a closet Republican. Given that Atlanta voters are overwhelmingly Democrats, it would appear that many white Democrats had other motivations besides party when they went into the voting booth.
https://www.theroot.com/that-was-close-3-things-to-know-about-atlanta-s-wild-m-1821048553
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