Political expert explains blue wave seen across Georgia, South Carolina in midterms

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas turned blue Tuesday night. Texas had not been blue in nearly 40 years.

Ned Rinalducci, chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Miami Dade College, said waves like this are not unprecedented. This was seen with Clinton, Bush and Obama. The questions are what drove people to vote this way and whether it will last.

“It’s clearly saying that there’s dissatisfaction with what’s happening,” Rinalducci said. “And when things are tough economically, we tend to put the blame on the administration that’s in power.”

“Whether or not this is a sea change of any kind, … we’re not going to know until 2028 whether this is just a reaction to right now or whether this is a bigger change,” he said.

Black women now hold seven of the eight state executive offices in Georgia. Those include the first Black woman governor, the first Black woman elected as secretary of state and the first female attorney general, among others.

“It’s incredibly important, given that a lot of the national discourse was saying, particularly after the last presidential election, that a woman of color can’t win in America. That’s not true,” Rinalducci said. “A woman of color can win in America and can win in a southern state like Georgia.”

A blue wave in Georgia doesn’t necessarily mean there are more Democrats than Republicans in the state or in any other state that turned blue. It means more people who went to the polls voted blue than red.

Many issues drove people to the polls. Cost of living was one of the biggest.

Asked which issues will be addressed first during the wave, Rinalducci said, “Medicaid spending, certainly abortion, women’s health care, those kinds of things. Those are absolutely some of the top things on the agenda.”

Rinalducci said Georgia will start to see policy changes over the next year now that the House and the governor’s mansion have flipped. The executive branch is still controlled by the Trump administration.