I was hoping for 20%...I'm greedy that way. 8^)
I wasn't surprised to see that the counties garnering the highest vote tallies for Kerry were all in metropolitan or college-town areas...
Most of the counties in my area (Southwestern part of the state) were solid Bush...Bush also squeaked by in Jimmy Carter's home county of Sumter by only a few hundred votes (guess the Moral Moron/Citizen of the World probably isn't too happy about that). My county, Lee, really gave Kerry a whoopin', but heavy-minority Daugherty County just below me went for Kerry.
That just goes to show how every person's vote counts.
My relatives live east of here in Ben Hill county. Fitzgerald and BH Co. were safe Dem strongholds for so long and used to be a really snooty, materialistic, know-your-place, goosestep-with-Socialism area that I thought they'd beat a trance dance to the polls and vote for the Traitor, but they really surprised me this time and chose Bush.
I happened to notice quite a few Bush/Kerry yard signs in black neighborhoods over there. I was really impressed.
The old-fashioned politics of Georgia used to be that if daddy was a Democrat, if hubby was a Democrat, you were supposed to be one, too. That kind of attitude is thankfully dying off because maybe people all over this state, regardless of old traditions, are seeing the Democratic Party (2004 model) as the anti-American, anti-security, condescending, racist, paternalistic, hateful, lawyer-and-radical dominated party that it is.
I admire the courage of black Americans who have rejected the old "vote Democrat because Martin Luther King was one and they'll give you more stuff" thinking and used their wisdom and common sense to make the right choice this time.
Old ways are coming to a close here, and this needs to continue. Black people are NOT second-class citizens and they deserve a party that doesn't treat them like it.