Election 2024: Republicans maintain majority in Georgia state Senate

(The Center Square) – With all 56 state Senate seats up for grabs on Tuesday, Republicans maintained the majority.

Republicans kept a 33-23 majority over Democrats, not losing a single seat.

Terms for senators are two years. Twenty-nine was the magic number for a majority, which Republicans surpassed.

Republicans first took chamber power in 2002, the same year they took the governor’s seat. Since 2004, when Republicans also took the state House, there has been a Republican trifecta in Georgia’s state government.

That said, Democrats have been slowly closing the gap in the Senate since 2016, when they held only 18 seats. The 2022 election led to the smallest margin between the parties since 2002.

This meant that this election would be very telling for each party’s control in the state. Another potential for shakeup was that since the last election in 2022, there has been redistricting across Georgia.

Yet, experts told The Center Square that they expected the only toss-up seat to be District 48, which has a growing Asian Indian population. There, Republican incumbent Shawn Still was challenged by Democratic political newcomer Ashwin Ramaaswami. With all precincts reporting, Still won the seat with 52% of the vote.

Voters in many districts had little to no competition. Of the 56 state Senate seats up for grabs, only 24 of them had a candidate from each party running.

Incumbents were also strongly favored. Only four districts did not have incumbents running for reelection, and two of those had only one party’s candidate running.

Districts 34, 38, 49 and 55 were all without incumbents seeking reelection. In District 38, only Democrat Rashuan Kemp was running, while in District 49, only Republican Drew Echols was running.

That left just District 34 and District 55 as districts where voters do not have an incumbent on the ticket and party options.

In District 34, Democrat candidate Kenya Wicks handily won the seat against Republican Andrew Honeycutt. District 55 was also a Democratic stronghold, and there Democrat Randal Mangham beat out Republican Mary Benefield.

Though Georgia is considered a swing state, since 2005 the governorship, state Senate, and state House have all gone the way of Republicans. That trend continued this election, as they held the line against any further Democrat infringement on their majority in the state Senate.