COLUMBUS, Ga. - Muscogee County voters cast 62,633 ballots in the Nov. 3 general election, a turnout of 48% of the county's 130,429 active registered voters, according to figures WRBL reported Nov. 4 from the Muscogee County Elections and Registration Office. That is about 3,000 more ballots than the 59,632 cast in the 2022 midterm, when the county had 120,202 active voters and a turnout rate of 49.6%. The count rose while the rate fell because the rolls grew faster than participation.

Elections Director Nancy Boren told WRBL that about 40,000 of those ballots were cast during early voting, which ran at five locations and added two more sites in the final week. "I think there was a push for early voting," Boren said. The county still had 21 provisional ballots to review before the results could be certified, the station reported.

What happened Monday, and what happens by Nov. 20

The Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration scheduled its regular meeting for 2 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, at the City Services Center, 3111 Citizens Way, with certification of the general election to follow at 3 p.m., according to the county's elections page. Georgia law requires every county to certify by 5 p.m. on the Monday after the election, the Brennan Center for Justice notes in its guide to the state's certification process, citing O.C.G.A. 21-2-493 and 21-2-497. Certified county totals had not been posted on the county's elections page when this story was prepared, so every figure below comes from unofficial returns.

The next deadline belongs to the Secretary of State. Under O.C.G.A. 21-2-499(b), the secretary must certify statewide and multicounty federal results "not later than 5:00 P.M. on the seventeenth day following the date on which such election was conducted," which this year is Friday, Nov. 20, according to the Brennan Center. Cobb County's elections office lists the same Nov. 20 statewide deadline in a Nov. 5 explainer on the difference between unofficial and official results.

Between those two dates comes the audit. Georgia is running 20 risk-limiting audits for this election, covering governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, U.S. Senate, all 14 U.S. House seats and one additional state office chosen by random drawing, WSB-TV reported Oct. 22. "We audit the fool out of it to show you that those machines are accurate," Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at the time. Cobb County's explainer says changes to unofficial totals during canvassing "do not necessarily indicate a problem."

No Dec. 1 runoff on the Muscogee ballot

Georgia's general election runoff date is Tuesday, Dec. 1, but it applies only to races in which no candidate reached a majority. A results tracker maintained by MultiState lists a winner in every statewide contest and shows only one Dec. 1 runoff anywhere in Georgia, in House District 151 between Republican Mike Cheokas and Democrat Ethan Wolfe, a southwest Georgia district outside the Columbus area. The Muscogee elections page carried no runoff information as of this week.

How the county voted

Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms carried Muscogee County 41,439 votes to 20,763 for Republican Rick Jackson, a margin of 20,676, according to a precinct analysis by the Atlanta public affairs firm Ohio River South that the Ledger-Enquirer reported Nov. 6 and the Courier Eco Latino published in a Nov. 7 interview with firm partner Karl Douglass. Stacey Abrams won the county by 11,224 votes in 2022. Bottoms took 66.6% of the two-party vote, up 7.1 points from Abrams' 59.5%, and won 19 of the county's 25 precincts compared with 13 for Abrams four years ago and 15 for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Six north Columbus precincts flipped

The biggest movement came in the 12 precincts Brian Kemp won in 2022, which sit in north Columbus and midtown. The Democratic share of the two-party vote there rose from 39.6% to 50.3%, and Bottoms won six of the 12 outright, according to the analysis. Ossoff won 10 of them.

The largest swings were at the Ambassadors Church precinct, 13.3 points toward the Democrats, followed by Chattahoochee Church at 13.2, Britt David at 13.0 and Beallwood Baptist Church at 12.4. Britt David was the closest precinct in the county, where Jackson edged Bottoms 638 to 632. Six precincts finished within 3 points of an even split: Chattahoochee Church, St. Andrews, Britt David, Morningside Baptist Church, St. Paul and St. Peter, all of which Kemp carried in 2022.

"The old map, a Democratic south and a Republican north, no longer describes this county," Douglass told the Courier Eco Latino. He also cautioned against reading too much into one cycle. "I'm not ready to call it permanent," he said.

University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock told the Ledger-Enquirer the results were "step one with a major shift," but said whether it lasts is unknown. "We're not going to know that for several election cycles," he said. Bullock's comments appeared in the Ledger-Enquirer's Nov. 6 report on the analysis.

Turnout was uneven

The eight south Columbus precincts where Abrams topped 80% in 2022 gave Bottoms 91.5% of the two-party vote, but turnout there was 42.5% of registered voters compared with 53.1% in the 12 precincts Kemp had won, the analysis found. Had the base precincts matched that rate, they would have produced about 5,200 more ballots. Turnout in the highest-income third of precincts was 56.8%, against 38.0% in the lowest-income third.

Legislative races tightened in Muscogee

Republican state Sen. Randy Robertson of Cataula won Senate District 29 with 57.8% district-wide, but in the Muscogee portion he took 12,980 votes, or 50.9%, to 12,496 for Democrat Jeff Lowe, according to the analysis. Four years ago he had 61.8% of the Muscogee vote. Republican state Rep. Carmen Rice of Columbus won House District 139 with 55.8% district-wide and 51.0% in Muscogee, 8,290 votes to 7,963 for Democrat Elliot Valdez.

Ohio River South based its 2026 figures on unofficial Georgia Secretary of State returns and its 2022 and 2024 figures on OpenElections precinct files. Douglass said small changes are possible after certification. The firm compared all 25 Muscogee precincts across the 2022, 2024 and 2026 elections.