[2] Georgia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump of Florida, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence of Indiana against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware, and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Polls of the state throughout the campaign indicated a close race, and prior to election day, most news organizations considered Georgia a toss-up.

This was the only state in the Deep South carried by Biden, made possible by significant demographic shifts over the previous decade, especially in Metro Atlanta.

Although majority-minority Burke County—near Augusta—flipped to Trump after supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden was able to build Clinton's vote shares in the densely populated Metro Atlanta counties of Gwinnett, Cobb, and Henry, increasing her vote shares of 50%, 48%, and 50% to 58%, 56%, and 60%, respectively–in all three cases, the best showing for a non-Georgian Democrat since John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election.

Due to the close margins in the initial election results, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on November 11 that a recount by hand would be conducted.

[10] Trump would engage in unsuccessful attempts to overturn the results, challenging Raffensperger in a widely publicized phone call to "find" 11,780 more votes, the exact number he needed to win the state.

Further signalling Georgia's blue shift were the state 2018 midterms, where Democrat Stacey Abrams nearly won the governor's race against Republican Brian Kemp.

Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992;[128] the first to win any statewide election in Georgia since 2006;[129] the first to carry a state in the Deep South since Clinton won Louisiana in 1996; and the first to gain over 70% of the vote in Fulton County since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

[130] Biden also became the first Democrat to win the White House without carrying Baker, Burke, Dooly, Peach, Quitman, or Twiggs counties since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

In what was likely the biggest key to Biden's victory in Georgia, the Democratic Party invested heavily in the state, with activist and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams heading an effort to boost minority turnout, especially among African-American voters.

Trump's strength in the state came from Southern whites—mainly those outside of Atlanta's urban area—as he easily won those without a college degree, especially in Georgia's rural areas; his vote share with college-educated whites dropped, however, and Trump only won suburban Georgia by 3 points this cycle.

Trump, on the other hand, performed strongest in the northern and southeastern parts of the state, which are rural and were historically a hotbed for Dixiecrats.

On November 11, the Secretary of State of Georgia announced there would be a statewide hand recount of every paper ballot in addition to the normal audit process.

The change in the count was due to a number of human errors, including memory cards that did not upload properly to the state servers, and was not attributable to any fraud in the original tally.

Unlike the statewide audit of each individual ballot by hand, the recount would involve a re-scanning of the voting machines.

Sterling appealed to President Trump: "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.

Referring to Biden's 11,779-vote victory margin, Trump instructed Raffensperger that "there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated...I just want to find 11,780 votes.

The petitioners in the case alleged that fraud had occurred – based on sworn affidavits provided by four election workers who all claimed to have handled thousands of fraudulent ballots.

"Fulton County has a long-standing history of election mismanagement that has understandably weakened voters' faith in its system.

The subpoenas were sent to a Conservative election integrity group "True the Vote" who earlier provided information to Georgia officials that as many as 242 people (dubbed mules) illegally gathered third-party ballots during the battleground state's November 2020 election and subsequent U.S. Senate races and then stuffed the ballots into multiple mail-in-ballot drop boxes in numerous locations around the state.

"[153] True the Vote have worked with Dinesh D'Souza to help produce the 2022 movie 2000 Mules which alleges widespread fraud in the November 2020 election.

[156] The Atlanta Journal Constitution found about 3,000 too many absentee votes counted for Biden as identified by investigators during the 2020 Fulton County audit.