The MAGA takeover of the Georgia GOP is nearly complete.

The old-guard of the Republican Party in Georgia has fallen after withstanding MAGA’s furor since 2020, replaced by a new breed of candidates — up and down the ballot — closely aligned with President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, the Trump allies marched on: Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones clinched a spot in the gubernatorial runoff on Tuesday alongside billionaire Rick Jackson, who told supporters he’d govern like the president “with a southern tone.” In the GOP Senate primary, Rep. Mike Collins, a staunch MAGA ally, advanced to a runoff. And House candidates Jim Kingston, Houston Gaines and Clay Fuller won their races by wide margins, boosted by the president’s endorsement.

Meanwhile, longtime Trump antagonists — especially those who denied the 2020 election was “stolen” — lost their primary battles: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Attorney General Chris Carr and Gabriel Sterling, a former top Raffensperger aide.

The results offered the clearest sign yet that Georgia Republican voters increasingly want their political future tied to Trump-style politics and messaging — a shift in one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds that could shape elections in 2026 and beyond.

“It’s key to success in a Republican primary in Georgia today to either have the president’s endorsement or be able to make the case to voters that you’re certainly a Trump-aligned candidate,” said Georgia Republican Party chair Josh McKoon, a loyal Trump ally.

Candidates like Raffensperger may now be “relics of the past,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Republican strategist who helped Jones’ campaign. “That doesn’t mean they’re bad human beings, it just means that their style of politics is not consistent today with where the base of the party is.”

But hugging Trump that tightly in the primary has proved lethal for some Republicans in the general election, and Democrats in Georgia hope 2026 will echo the GOP’s 2022 election losses.

The Republican Party in Georgia, like in other states, has been drifting more and more toward a full-throated populist approach during the Trump era. But the old guard led by outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp (R) as well as Raffensperger and Carr managed to hold on through the 2022 midterm primaries against a number of Trump-backed challengers, delaying the hard MAGA takeover that occurred in many other states earlier on. The sharp shift this cycle comes as the GOP pushes for more resources and attention in the key swing state.

Now, some GOP strategists increasingly view aligning with Trump not just as an ideological litmus test, but as a practical necessity — especially as Trump’s political operation sits on  roughly $300 million in campaign funds. 

“It is good for the state of Georgia to choose these MAGA-aligned candidates in that the president has a huge war chest, and that war chest can be utilized for candidates that he likes,” said one Georgia-based Republican strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state’s dynamics.

Across the state’s marquee Senate and governor’s primaries, the winning GOP candidates all embraced Trump’s brand. The expensive and rancorous primary for the governor’s mansion quickly evolved into a contest over who best carried the MAGA mantle — Jones, who has the president’s explicit support, or Jackson, who tried to convince voters that he, too, was closely aligned with Trump.

Trump has stayed out of the Senate primary so far, but the candidates still raced to align with his movement. Collins, a hardline immigration hawk and loyal Trump ally on Capitol Hill who appeared at a rally with Trump earlier this year, said that he is “unapologetically Pro-God, Pro-Trump, Pro-2nd Amendment, Pro-Strong Military” after advancing to the runoff.

Even former football coach Derek Dooley — Kemp’s handpicked candidate who will face off against Collins in the June runoff — leaned into his status as an outsider (à la Trump) and adopted a “Georgia First” pitch.

“We haven’t made any attempts to alienate Trump whatsoever. Derek supports the agenda. He’s made it clear through the debate and multiple interviews that he supports the president,” said a senior Dooley adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak openly about the race, prior to Election Day.

It’s a notable gamble for a party that was punished during the 2022 midterms for nominating hardline MAGA candidates across the country — including former football star Herschel Walker for Georgia Senate — who later lost in key races. This midterms cycle appears to be trending much harder toward Democrats, given Trump’s low approval ratings, voters’ concerns with the economy and the unpopular war in Iran.

Democrats are more than eager to tie Republicans to the president. Devon Cruz, a spokesperson for the Georgia Democratic Party, said in a statement that the Senate runoff will leave Collins and Dooley “terminally inseparable” from Trump.

Still, Tuesday’s results underscored how Trump’s dominance is increasingly shaping which Republicans can win statewide primaries in key races. And it’s not just in Georgia.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has long been a thorn in the president’s side, lost his seat to a Trump-endorsed challenger in a bitter retributive campaign. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy was ousted by the president’s favored candidate. Trump vanquished a majority of the Indiana Republicans who bucked him on redistricting. And he finally backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Senate race after deeming Sen. John Cornyn to be an insufficient ally.

“The party has completely changed in 50 states,” Lake, the Republican strategist, said. “It looks nothing like it did a decade ago, and it looks absolutely nothing like it did 15 years ago.”

“We’re a party that’s a lot different, that’s got a sharper focus, that’s willing to fight more, ” he added.

Raffensperger, who had become the biggest icon of standing up to the president, acknowledged to reporters following his loss that conspiracies about the 2020 election – despite no evidence to support any claims of fraud – helped tank his chances with Republican voters.

But he stopped short of blaming Trump’s grip on the party on his failure to advance in the runoff: “I just think terms are up, and so it’s a changing of the guard and turning over a new leaf,” he told reporters after his election loss. “We’ll have new people with new plans, new hopes, new visions, and we’re going to see where it goes.”

Rep. Mike Collins and former football coach Derek Dooley advanced to a runoff in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary, dragging out a bitter contest to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.

The result plunges Republicans into another monthlong intraparty fight. Meanwhile, Ossoff, who already has a massive name ID and $31 million and counting in his warchest, can continue building and conserving his resources in the marquee race.

It also sets up a proxy battle between President Donald Trump, who holds Collins as a close ally, and Georgia’s GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who backed Dooley for the nomination. Dooley, who was polling in third place ahead of Election Day, had a late burst of momentum after casting himself as a political outsider and leaning on his ties to Kemp.

The outcome now intensifies pressure on Trump, who didn’t support a candidate in the primary, to intervene. The president’s endorsement in a runoff — where the electorate tends to be highly engaged voters — could prove decisive.

Keisha Lance Bottoms is the Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, as the party seeks to flip the state’s top seat for the first time in nearly three decades.

Bottoms, who defeated a crowded field to win the race outright Tuesday, can pivot to the general election — even as Republicans are headed toward a costly runoff of their own.

Georgia hasn’t elected a Democrat to the governorship since 1998 but has trended hard toward purple-state status in recent years, with Democrats carrying the state in the 2020 presidential election and winning Senate races there that year and in 2022. But the governor’s mansion has remained elusive — and some Democrats have already questioned Bottoms’ ability to win in a general election, noting that her rocky tenure as Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 to 2022 makes her vulnerable to general election attacks.

Bottoms’ outright win lets her get a head start at closing her fundraising gap in the race: Both Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and health care executive Rick Jackson — the two leading candidates on the Republican side — have amassed war chests that exceed hers by millions of dollars, but much of that money has come from personal loans to their campaigns.

With the primary now behind her, she is likely to ramp up efforts to tap national donors and support from Democratic leaders who had largely stayed on the sidelines.

Bottoms, who served as a senior adviser during the Biden administration and earned the former president’s endorsement, boasted higher name recognition than her primary opponents. She easily defeated former state Sen. Jason Esteves, former DeKalb County executive Michael Thurmond and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan to clinch the nomination Tuesday.

Public polling before the primary showed Bottoms as the clear front-runner, but the state’s rules — which require candidates to win more than 50 percent of the vote — increased the likelihood of a runoff.

Still, even before the primary concluded, she was already the subject of attack ads from Republicans, including Jackson, foreshadowing the onslaught likely to come.