On Friday afternoon, news outlets finally began to call President-elect Joe Biden the winner in Georgia, a state that hadnt voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992.

For years, groups have been organizing and engaging Georgias substantial Black, Latino and Asian American populations, pushing Democratic candidates to appeal directly to those voters, and beating back decades of efforts to suppress minority votes. And now that theyve succeeded, progressive organizers across the South are looking to Georgia for lessons in how to do the same in their states.

Its an affirmation that were on the right track and that our work can pay off, Cassia Herron, board chair of the progressive grassroots group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, said of Georgias blue shift a sentiment that organizers in Mississippi and other Southern states echoed.

Progressive victory may feel a long way off in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Mississippi, where Republican voters propelled both President Donald Trump and GOP Senate incumbents to easy victories. Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville also handily defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones to reinforce the GOPs stranglehold on Alabama.

But it wasnt that long ago that the landscape looked similarly dire in Georgia, where 2020s blue turn was more than a decade in the making.