Before settlement by European colonists, Georgia was inhabited by the mound building cultures.

On February 12, 1733, a year after Georgia was established as a British colony, the Province of Georgia was established in Savannah by British General James Oglethorpe. It was administered by the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America under a charter issued by (and named for) King George II. The Trustees implemented an elaborate plan for the colony's settlement, known as the Oglethorpe Plan, which envisioned an agrarian society of yeoman farmers and prohibited slavery. The colony was invaded by the Spanish in 1742, during the War of Jenkins' Ear. In 1752, after the government failed to renew subsidies that had helped support the colony, the Trustees turned over control to the crown. Georgia became a crown colony, with a governor appointed by the king of Great Britain.

The Province of Georgia was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. Its delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which convened in present-day Independence Hall in Philadelphia, joined other delegates in unanimously approving the Declaration of Independence, which declared the Thirteen Colonies free and independent from British colonial rule.

Georgia's first constitution was ratified in February 1777. Georgia was the 10th state to ratify the Articles of Confederation on July 24, 1778, and was the 4th state to ratify the United States Constitution on January 2, 1788.

After the Creek War (1813–1814), General Andrew Jackson forced the Muscogee (Creek) tribes to surrender land to Georgia, including in the Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814), surrendering 21 million acres in what is now southern Georgia and central Alabama, and the Treaty of Indian Springs (1825). In 1829, gold was discovered in the North Georgia mountains leading to the Georgia Gold Rush and establishment of a federal mint in Dahlonega, which continued in operation until 1861. The resulting influx of American settlers put pressure on the federal U.S. government to take land from the Cherokee Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, sending many eastern Indian nations to reservations in present-day Oklahoma, including all of Georgia's tribes. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that U.S. states were not permitted to redraw Indian boundaries, President Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin Van Buren, dispatched federal troops to gather the tribes and deport them west of the Mississippi. This forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears, led to the death of more than four thousand Cherokees.

In early 1861, as the American Civil War commenced, Georgia chose to leave the Union to join the Confederacy. Support for secession from the Union enjoyed a slight majority among the state's delegates, and the state ultimately became one of several major military theaters during the Civil War.

Major battles took place at Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, and Atlanta. In December 1864, a large swath of the state from Atlanta to Savannah, was destroyed during General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea, during which 18,253 Georgian soldiers were killed, representing roughly one of every five then in service of the Confederacy.

In 1870, following the Reconstruction era, Georgia was the last among the Confederacy to rejoin the Union.

With white Democrats having regained power in the state legislature, they passed a poll tax in 1877, which disenfranchised many poor black (and some white) people, preventing them from registering.

In 1908, the state established a white primary; with the only competitive contests within the Democratic Party, it was another way to exclude black people from politics. They constituted 46.7% of the state's population in 1900, but the proportion of Georgia's population that was African American dropped thereafter to 28%, primarily due to tens of thousands leaving the state during the Great Migration. According to the Equal Justice Initiative's 2015 report on lynching in the United States (1877–1950), Georgia had 531 deaths, the second-highest total of these extralegal executions of any state in the South. The overwhelming number of victims were black and male. Political disfranchisement persisted through the mid-1960s, until after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

An Atlanta-born Baptist minister who was part of the educated middle class that had developed in Atlanta's African-American community, Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as a national leader in the civil rights movement. King joined with others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta in 1957 to provide political leadership for the civil rights vovement across the South. In 1956, civil rights riots occurred at the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta following a ash between Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer and Governor Marvin Griffin.

On February 5, 1958, during a training mission flown by a B-47, a Mark 15 nuclear bomb, also known as the Tybee Bomb, was lost off the coast of Tybee Island near Savannah. The bomb was thought by the Department of Energy to lie buried in silt at the bottom of Wassaw Sound.

By the 1960s, the proportion of African Americans in Georgia had declined to 28% of the state's population, after waves of migration to the North and some immigration by whites. With their voting power diminished, it took some years for African Americans to win a state-wide office. Julian Bond, a civil rights leader, was elected to the Georgia's House of Representatives in 1965, and served multiple terms there and subsequently in Georgia's State Senate.

Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. testified before Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act, and Governor Carl Sanders worked with the Kennedy administration charged with ensuring the state's compliance. Ralph McGill, editor and syndicated columnist at the Atlanta Constitution, wrote supportively of civil rights movement. In 1970, Jimmy Carter, who was recently elected the state's governor, declared in his inaugural address that the era of racial segregation had ended. In 1972, Georgians elected Andrew Young to Congress as the first African American Congressman since the Reconstruction era.

In 1980, construction was completed on an expansion of what is now named Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL). The busiest and most efficient airport in the world, it accommodates more than a hundred million passengers annually. Employing more than 60,000 people, the airport became a major engine for economic growth. With the advantages of cheap real estate, low taxes, right-to-work laws and a regulatory environment limiting government interference, the Atlanta metropolitan area became a national center of finance, insurance, technology, manufacturing, real estate, logistics, and transportation companies, as well as the film, convention, and trade show businesses. As a testament to the city's growing international profile, in 1990 the International Olympic Committee selected Atlanta as the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics. Taking advantage of Atlanta's status as a transportation hub, in 1991, UPS established its headquarters in the suburb of Sandy Springs. In 1992, construction finished on Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in the U.S. outside of New York City or Chicago.

On February 19, 2003, Georgia adopted its current state flag, resembling the state's first official flag. In 2024, it was announced that Atlanta would host multiple games during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which further substantiated the economic investment and growth in the city and state.

Beginning from the Atlantic Ocean, the state's eastern border with South Carolina runs up the Savannah River, northwest to its origin at the confluence of the Tugaloo and Seneca Rivers. It then continues up the Tugaloo (originally Tugalo) and into the Chattooga River, its most significant tributary. These bounds were decided in the 1797 Treaty of Beaufort, and tested in the U.S. Supreme Court in the two Georgia v. South Carolina cases in 1923 and 1989.

The border then takes a sharp turn around the tip of Rabun County, at latitude 35°N, though from this point it diverges slightly south (due to inaccuracies in the original survey, conducted in 1818). This northern border was originally the Georgia and North Carolina border all the way to the Mississippi River, until Tennessee was divided from North Carolina, and the Yazoo companies induced the legislature of Georgia to pass an act, approved by the governor in 1795, to sell the greater part of Georgia's territory presently comprising Alabama and Mississippi.

The state's western border runs in a straight line south-southeastward from a point southwest of Chattanooga, to meet the Chattahoochee River near West Point. It continues downriver to the point where it joins the Flint River (the confluence of the two forming Florida's Apalachicola River); the southern border goes almost due east and very slightly south, in a straight line to the St. Mary's River, which then forms the remainder of the boundary back to the ocean.

The water boundaries are still set to be the original thalweg of the rivers. Since then, several have been inundated by lakes created by dams, including the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint point now under Lake Seminole.

An 1818 survey erroneously placed Georgia's border with Tennessee one mile (1.6 km) south of the intended location of the 35th parallel north. State legislators still dispute this placement, as correction of this inaccuracy would allow Georgia access to water from the Tennessee River.

Georgia consists of five principal physiographic regions: The Cumberland Plateau, Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont, and the Atlantic coastal plain. Each region has its own distinctive characteristics. For instance, the region, which lies in the northwest corner of the state, includes limestone, sandstone, shale, and other sedimentary rocks, which have yielded construction-grade limestone, barite, ocher, and small amounts of coal.

The state of Georgia has approximately 250 tree species and 58 protected plants. Georgia's native trees include red cedar, a variety of pines, oaks, hollies, cypress, sweetgum, scaly-bark and white hickories, and sabal palmetto. East Georgia is in the subtropical coniferous forest biome and conifer species as other broadleaf evergreen flora make up the majority of the southern and coastal regions. Yellow jasmine and mountain laurel make up just a few of the flowering shrubs in the state.

White-tailed deer are found in nearly all counties of Georgia. The northern mockingbird and brown thrasher are among the 160 bird species that live in the state.

Reptiles include the eastern diamondback, copperhead, and cottonmouth snakes as well as alligators; amphibians include salamanders, frogs and toads. There are about 79 species of reptile and 63 amphibians known to live in Georgia. The Argentine black and white tegu is currently an invasive species in Georgia. It poses a problem to local wildlife by chasing down and killing many native species and dominating habitats.

The most popular freshwater game fish are trout, bream, bass, and catfish, all but the last of which are produced in state hatcheries for restocking. Popular saltwater game fish include red drum, spotted seatrout, flounder, and tarpon. Porpoises, whales, shrimp, oysters, and blue crabs are found inshore and offshore of the Georgia coast.

The majority of the state is primarily a humid subtropical climate. Hot and humid summers are typical, except at the highest elevations. The entire state, including the North Georgia mountains, receives moderate to heavy precipitation, which varies from 45 inches (1,100 mm) in central Georgia to approximately 75 inches (1,900 mm) around the northeast part of the state. The degree to which the weather of a certain region of Georgia is subtropical depends on the latitude, its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico, and the elevation. The latter factor is felt chiefly in the mountainous areas of the northern part of the state, which are farther away from the ocean and can be 4,500 feet (1,400 m) above sea level. The USDA plant hardiness zones for Georgia range from zone 6b (no colder than −5 °F (−21 °C)) in the Blue Ridge Mountains to zone 8b (no colder than 15 °F (−9 °C) ) along the Atlantic coast and Florida border.

The highest temperature ever recorded is 112 °F (44 °C) in Louisville on July 24, 1952, while the lowest is −17 °F (−27 °C) in northern Floyd County on January 27, 1940. Georgia is one of the leading states in frequency of tornadoes, though they are rarely stronger than EF1. Although tornadoes striking the city are very rare, an EF2 tornado hit down town Atlanta on March 14, 2008, causing moderate to severe damage to various buildings. With a coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, Georgia is also vulnerable to hurricanes, although direct hurricane strikes were rare during the 20th century. Georgia often is affected by hurricanes that strike the Florida Panhandle, weaken over land, and bring strong tropical storm winds and heavy rain to the interior, a recent example being Hurricane Michael, as well as hurricanes that come close to the Georgia coastline, brushing the coast on their way north without ever making landfall. Hurricane Matthew of 2016 and Hurricane Dorian of 2019 did just that.

Due to anthropogenic climate change, the climate of Georgia is warming. This is already causing major disruption, for example, from sea level rise (Georgia is more vulnerable to it than many other states because its land is sinking) and further warming will increase it.

Atlanta, located in north-central Georgia at the Eastern Continental Divide, has been Georgia's capital city since 1868. It is the most populous city in Georgia, with a 2020 U.S. census population of just over 498,000. The state has seventeen cities with populations over 50,000, based on official 2020 U.S. census data.

Along with the rest of the Southeast, Georgia's population continues to grow rapidly, with primary gains concentrated in urban areas. The U.S. Census Bureau lists fourteen metropolitan areas in the state. The population of the Atlanta metropolitan area added 1.23 million people (24%) between 2000 and 2010, and Atlanta rose in rank from the eleventh-largest metropolitan area in the United States to the ninth-largest. The Atlanta metropolitan area is the cultural and economic center of the Southeast; its official population in 2020 was over 6 million, or 57% of Georgia's total population.

The United States Census Bureau reported Georgia's official population to be 10,711,908 as of the 2020 United States census. This was an increase of 1,024,255, or 10.57% over the 2010 figure of 9,687,653 residents. The state made up 3.14% of the total US population in 2010 and 3.23% in 2020.

As of 2010, the number of illegal immigrants living in Georgia more than doubled to 480,000 from January 2000 to January 2009, according to a federal report. That gave Georgia the greatest percentage increase among the 10 states with the biggest undocumented immigrant populations during those years. Georgia has banned sanctuary cities.

In 2018, The top countries of origin for Georgia's immigrants were Mexico, India, Jamaica, Korea, and Guatemala.

There were 743,000 veterans in 2009.

According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 10,689 homeless people in Georgia.

In the 1980 census, 1,584,303 people from Georgia claimed English ancestry out of a total state population of 3,994,817, making them 40% of the state, and the largest ethnic group at the time. Today, many of these same people claim they are of "American" ancestry, as do many of Scots-Irish descent; however, their families have lived in the state for so long, in many cases since the colonial period, that they choose to identify simply as having "American" ancestry or do not in fact know their own ancestry.

Historically, about half of Georgia's population was composed of African Americans who, before the American Civil War, were almost exclusively enslaved. The Great Migration of hundreds of thousands of blacks from the rural South to the industrial North from 1914 to 1970 reduced the African American population. However, the proportion of Georgia's population that is Black has increased since 1990 and today the state is third in percent of the total population that is African American (after Mississippi and Louisiana) and third in numeric Black population after New York and Florida.

Georgia had the second-fastest-growing Asian population growth in the U.S. from 1990 to 2000, more than doubling in size during the ten-year period. Indian people and Chinese people are the largest Asian groups in Georgia. Georgia also has a sizeable Latino population. Many are of Mexican descent.

Georgia is the state with the third-lowest percentage of older people (65 or older), at 12.8 percent (as of 2015). As of 2011, 58.8% of Georgia's population younger than 1 were minorities (meaning they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white) compared to other states like California with 75.1%, Texas with 69.8%, and New York with 55.6%.

The colonial settlement of large numbers of Scottish American, English American and Scotch-Irish Americans in the mountains and Piedmont, and coastal settlement by some English Americans and African Americans, have strongly influenced the state's culture in food, language and music. The concentration of African slaves repeatedly "imported" to coastal areas in the 18th century from rice-growing regions of West Africa led to the development of Gullah-Geechee language and culture in the Low Country among African Americans. They share a unique heritage in which many African traditions of food, religion and culture were retained. In the creolization of Southern culture, their foodways became an integral part of Low Country cooking. Sephardic Jews, French-speaking Swiss people, Moravians, Irish convicts, Piedmont Italians and Russian people immigrated to the state during the colonial era.

The largest European ancestry groups as of 2011 were: English 8.1%, Irish 8.1%, and German 7.2%.

As of 2021, 85.62% (8,711,102) of Georgia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 7.82% (795,646) spoke Spanish, and 6.55% (666,849) spoke languages other than English or Spanish at home, with the most common of which were Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean. In total, 14.38% (1,462,495) of Georgia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.

According to the Pew Research Center, the composition of religious affiliation in Georgia was 67% Protestant, 9% Catholic, 1% Mormon, 1% Jewish, 0.5% Muslim, 0.5% Buddhist, and 0.5% Hindu. Atheists, deists, agnostics, and other unaffiliated people make up 18% of the population. Overall, Christianity was the dominant religion in the state, as part of the Bible Belt.

According to the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2010, the largest Christian denominations by number of adherents were the Southern Baptist Convention with 1,759,317; the United Methodist Church with 619,394; and the Roman Catholic Church with 596,384. Non-denominational Evangelical Protestant had 566,782 members, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) has 175,184 members, and the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. has 172,982 members. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is the largest Presbyterian body in the state, with 300 congregations and 100,000 members. The other large body, Presbyterian Church in America, had at its founding date 14 congregations and 2,800 members; in 2010 it counted 139 congregations and 32,000 members. The Roman Catholic Church is noteworthy in Georgia's urban areas, and includes the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah. Georgia is home to the second-largest Hindu temple in the United States, the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Atlanta, located in the Atlanta suburb Lilburn. The state also has a minority Sikh population and 4 gurudwaras. Georgia is home to several historic synagogues including The Temple (Atlanta), Congregation Beth Jacob (Atlanta), and Congregation Mickve Israel (Savannah). Chabad and the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute are also active in the state.

By the 2022 Public Religion Research Institute's study, 71% of the population were Christian; throughout its Christian population, 60% were Protestant and 8% were Catholic. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons collectively made up 3% of other Christians according to the study. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism collectively formed 4% of the state's non-Christian population; New Age spirituality was 2% of the religious population. Approximately 23% of the state was irreligious.

Tribes which historically lived in what is now Georgia include the Muscogee (including the Hitchiti subgroup), the Cherokee, the Oconi, the Guale, the Yamasee and the Apalachee. Other tribes which at various times lived in or migrated through Georgia include the Apalachicola, the Chatot, the Yuchi, the Chiaha, the Chickasaw, the Okmulgee, the Shawnee and the Timucua. Today there are no federally recognized tribes in Georgia, but there are three state-recognized tribes. Many inhabitants of Georgia identify as being Native American alone (32,151 people in 2010 census and 50,618 in 2020) or Native American in combination with one or more other races (51,873 people in 2010 census and 163,423 in 2020). Many Georgians also reported belonging to various Native American tribes in 2010 census, the largest of which was the Cherokee (21,525 people). Other tribes reported in Georgia in 2010 included for example the Muscogee (2,370 people), the Choctaw (1,419), the Sioux (1,027), the Seminole (664) and more.

As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Georgia's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the governor, currently Brian Kemp (Republican). Both the Governor of Georgia and lieutenant governor are elected on separate ballots to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the executive officials who comprise the governor's cabinet are elected by the citizens of Georgia rather than appointed by the governor.

Legislative authority resides in the General Assembly, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate, while members of the House of Representatives select their own Speaker. The Georgia Constitution mandates a maximum of 56 senators, elected from single-member districts, and a minimum of 180 representatives, apportioned among representative districts (which sometimes results in more than one representative per district); there are currently 56 senators and 180 representatives. The term of office for senators and representatives is two years. The laws enacted by the General Assembly are codified in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated.

State judicial authority rests with the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, which have statewide authority. In addition, there are smaller courts which have more limited geographical jurisdiction, including Superior Courts, State Courts, Juvenile Courts, Magistrate Courts and Probate Courts. Justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the Court of Appeals are elected statewide by the citizens in non-partisan elections to six-year terms. Judges for the smaller courts are elected to four-year terms by the state's citizens who live within that court's jurisdiction.

Georgia consists of 159 counties, second only to Texas, with 254. Georgia had 161 counties until the end of 1931, when Milton and Campbell were merged into the existing Fulton. Some counties have been named for prominent figures in both American and Georgian history, and many bear names with Native American origin. Counties in Georgia have their own elected legislative branch, usually called the Board of Commissioners, which usually also has executive authority in the county. Several counties have a sole commissioner form of government, with legislative and executive authority vested in a single person. Georgia is the only state with current Sole Commissioner counties. Georgia's Constitution provides all counties and cities with "home rule" authority. The county commissions have considerable power to pass legislation within their county, as a municipality would.

Georgia recognizes all local units of government as cities, so every incorporated town is legally a city. Georgia does not provide for townships or independent cities, though there have been bills proposed in the Legislature to provide for townships; it does allow consolidated city-county governments by local referendum. All of Georgia's second-tier cities except Savannah have now formed consolidated city-county governments by referendum: Columbus (in 1970), Athens (1990), Augusta (1995), and Macon (2012). (Augusta and Athens have excluded one or more small, incorporated towns within their consolidated boundaries; Columbus and Macon eventually absorbed all smaller incorporated entities within their consolidated boundaries.) The small town of Cusseta adopted a consolidated city-county government after it merged with unincorporated Chattahoochee County in 2003. Three years later, in 2006, the town of Georgetown consolidated with the rest of Quitman County.

There is no true metropolitan government in Georgia, though the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) and Georgia Regional Transportation Authority do provide some services, and the ARC must review all major land development projects in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Georgia voted Republican in six consecutive presidential elections from 1996 to 2016, a streak that was broken when the state went for Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020.

Until 1964, Georgia's state government had the longest unbroken record of single-party dominance, by the Democratic Party, of any state in the Union. This record was established largely due to the disenfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites by the state in its constitution and laws in the early 20th century. Some elements, such as requiring payment of poll taxes and passing literacy tests, prevented blacks from registering to vote; their exclusion from the political system lasted into the 1960s and reduced the Republican Party to a non-competitive status in the early 20th century.

White Democrats regained power after Reconstruction due in part to the efforts of some using intimidation and violence, but this method came into disrepute. In 1900, shortly before Georgia adopted a disfranchising constitutional amendment in 1908, blacks comprised 47% of the state's population.

The whites dealt with this problem of potential political power by the 1908 amendment, which in practice disenfranchised blacks and poor whites, nearly half of the state population. It required that any male at least 21 years of age wanting to register to vote must also be of good character and able to pass a test on citizenship, be able to read and write provisions of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions, or own at least forty acres of land or $500 in property. Any Georgian who had fought in any war from the American Revolution through the Spanish–American War was exempted from these additional qualifications. More importantly, any Georgian descended from a veteran of any of these wars also was exempted. Because, by 1908, many white Georgia males were grandsons of veterans or owned the required property, the exemption and the property requirement basically allowed only well-to-do whites to vote. The qualifications of good character, citizenship knowledge, literacy (all determined subjectively by white registrars), and property ownership were used to disqualify most blacks and poor whites, preventing them from registering to vote. The voter rolls dropped dramatically. In the early 20th century, Progressives promoted electoral reform and reducing the power of ward bosses to clean up politics. Their additional rules, such as the eight box law, continued to effectively close out people who were illiterate. White one-party rule was solidified.

For more than 130 years, from 1872 to 2003, Georgians nominated and elected only white Democratic governors, and white Democrats held the majority of seats in the General Assembly. Most of the Democrats elected throughout these years were Southern Democrats, who were fiscally and socially conservative by national standards. This voting pattern continued after the segregationist period.

Legal segregation was ended by passage of federal legislation in the 1960s. According to the 1960 census, the proportion of Georgia's population that was African American was 28%; hundreds of thousands of blacks had left the state in the Great Migration to the North and Midwest. New white residents arrived through migration and immigration. Following support from the national Democratic Party for the civil rights movement and especially civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, most African-American voters, as well as other minority voters, have largely supported the Democratic Party in Georgia.

In 2002, incumbent moderate Democratic Governor Roy Barnes was defeated by Republican Sonny Perdue, a state legislator and former Democrat. While Democrats retained control of the State House, they lost their majority in the Senate when four Democrats switched parties. They lost the House in the 2004 election. Republicans then controlled all three partisan elements of the state government.

Even before 2002, the state had become increasingly supportive of Republicans in Presidential elections. It has supported a Democrat for president only four times since 1960. In 1976 and 1980, native son Jimmy Carter carried the state; in 1992, the former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton narrowly won the state; and in 2020, Joe Biden narrowly carried the state. Generally, Republicans were strongest in the predominantly white suburban (especially the Atlanta suburbs) and rural portions of the state. Many of these areas were represented by conservative Democrats in the state legislature well into the 21st century. One of the most conservative of these was U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald, former head of the John Birch Society, who died when the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007 near Sakhalin Island. Democratic candidates have tended to win a higher percentage of the vote in the areas where black voters are most numerous, as well as in the cities among liberal urban populations (especially Atlanta and Athens), and the central and southwestern portion of the state.

The ascendancy of the Republican Party in Georgia and in the South in general resulted in Georgia U.S. House of Representatives member Newt Gingrich being elected as Speaker of the House following the election of a Republican majority in the House in 1994. Gingrich served as Speaker until 1999, when he resigned in the aftermath of the loss of House seats held by members of the GOP. Gingrich mounted an unsuccessful bid for president in the 2012 election, but withdrew after winning only the South Carolina and Georgia primaries.

In 2008, Democrat Jim Martin ran against incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss failed to acquire the necessary 50 percent of votes due to a Libertarian Party candidate receiving the remainder of votes. In the runoff election held on December 2, 2008, Chambliss became the second Georgia Republican to be reelected to the U.S. Senate.

In the 2018 elections, the governorship remained under control by a Republican (by 54,723 votes against a Democrat, Stacey Abrams), Republicans lost eight seats in the Georgia House of Representatives (winning 106), while Democrats gained ten (winning 74), Republicans lost two seats in the Georgia Senate (winning 35 seats), while Democrats gained two seats (winning 21), and five Democrat U.S. Representatives were elected with Republicans winning nine seats (one winning with just 419 votes over the Democratic challenger, and one seat being lost).

In the three presidential elections up to and including 2016, the Republican candidate has won Georgia by approximately five to eight points over the Democratic nominee, at least once for each election being narrower than margins recorded in some states that have flipped within that timeframe, such as Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. This trend led to the state narrowly electing Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020, and it coming to be regarded as a swing state.

In a 2020 study, Georgia was ranked as 49th on the "Cost of Voting Index" with only Texas ranking higher. In 2022, Georgia swung substantially back to the right towards Republicans with incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp winning reelection by 7.5% over Democrat Stacey Abrams with a raw vote margin of over 300,000 votes in the 2022 Georgia gubernatorial election; the largest amount since the early 2000s, and every other Republican statewide getting elected by a 5–10% margin of victory.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Georgia made significant changes in civil rights and governance. As in many other states, its legislature had not reapportioned congressional districts according to population from 1931 to after the 1960 census. Problems of malapportionment in the state legislature, where rural districts had outsize power in relation to urban districts, such as Atlanta's, were corrected after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964). The court ruled that congressional districts had to be reapportioned to have essentially equal populations.

A related case, Reynolds v. Sims (1964), required state legislatures to end their use of geographical districts or counties in favor of "one man, one vote"; that is, districts based upon approximately equal populations, to be reviewed and changed as necessary after each census. These changes resulted in residents of Atlanta and other urban areas gaining political power in Georgia in proportion to their populations. From the mid-1960s, the voting electorate increased after African Americans' rights to vote were enforced under civil rights law.

Economic growth through this period was dominated by Atlanta and its region. It was a bedrock of the emerging "New South". From the late 20th century, Atlanta attracted headquarters and relocated workers of national companies, becoming more diverse, liberal and cosmopolitan than many areas of the state.

In the 21st century, many conservative Democrats, including former U.S. Senator and governor Zell Miller, decided to support Republicans. The state's then-socially conservative bent resulted in wide support for measures such as restrictions on abortion. In 2004, a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages was approved by 76% of voters. However, after the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, all Georgia counties came into full compliance, recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state.

In presidential elections, Georgia voted solely Democratic in every election from 1900 to 1960. In 1964, it was one of only a handful of states to vote for Republican Barry Goldwater over Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1968, it did not vote for either of the two parties, but rather the American Independent Party and its nominee, Alabama Governor George Wallace. In 1972, the state returned to Republicans as part of a landslide victory for Richard Nixon. In 1976 and 1980, it voted for Democrat and former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. The state returned to Republicans in 1984 and 1988, before going Democratic once again in 1992. For every election between that year and 2020, Georgia voted heavily Republican, in line with many of its neighbors in the Deep South. In 2020, it voted Democratic for the first time in 28 years, carried by Joe Biden by 11,779 votes in his national defeat of incumbent Republican Donald Trump.

Though Republicans had continued to regularly win state and federal elections, in the years prior to 2020, their margins of victory tended to decrease, and that year, many election forecasts ranked Georgia as a swing state. Concurrent with the 2020 presidential election were elections for both of Georgia's United States Senate seats; when no candidate in either race received a majority of the vote, both went to run-offs, which Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won. Ossoff is the state's first Jewish senator, and Warnock is the state's first Black senator. The Democratic wins were attributed to the rapid diversification of the suburbs of Atlanta and increased turnout of younger African-American voters, particularly around the suburbs of Atlanta and in Savannah.

However, Republicans rebounded as Governor Brian Kemp won re-election in 2022 by a comfortable margin, and Donald Trump carried the state by 115,000 votes as part of his victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Georgia county and city public school systems are administered by school boards with members elected at the local level. As of 2013, all but 19 of 181 boards are elected from single-member districts. Residents and activist groups in Fayette County sued the board of commissioners and school board for maintaining an election system based on at-large voting, which tended to increase the power of the majority and effectively prevented minority participation on elected local boards for nearly 200 years. A change to single-member districts has resulted in the African-American minority being able to elect representatives of its choice.

Georgia high schools (grades nine through twelve) are required to administer a standardized, multiple choice End of Course Test, or EOCT, in each of eight core subjects: algebra, geometry, U.S. history, economics, biology, physical science, ninth-grade literature and composition, and American literature. The official purpose of the tests is to assess "specific content knowledge and skills". Although a minimum test score is not required for the student to receive credit in the course, completion of the test is mandatory. The EOCT score accounts for 15% of a student's grade in the course. The Georgia Milestone evaluation is taken by public school students in the state. In 2020, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Georgia State BOE agreed to state superintendent Richard Woods' proposal to change the weight of the EOCT test to only count for 0.01% of the Student's course grade. This change is currently only in effect for the 2020–21 school year.

Georgia has 85 public colleges, universities, and technical colleges in addition to more than 45 private institutes of higher learning. Among Georgia's public universities is the flagship research university, the University of Georgia, founded in 1785 as the country's oldest state-chartered university and the birthplace of the American system of public higher education. The University System of Georgia is the presiding body over public post-secondary education in the state. The System includes 29 institutions of higher learning and is governed by the Georgia Board of Regents. Georgia's workforce of more than 6.3 million is constantly refreshed by the growing number of people who move there along with the 90,000 graduates from the universities, colleges and technical colleges across the state, including the highly ranked University of Georgia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Kennesaw State University and Emory University.

The HOPE Scholarship, funded by the state lottery, is available to all Georgia residents who have graduated from high school or earned a General Educational Development certificate. The student must maintain a 3.0 or higher grade point average and attend a public college or university in the state.

The Georgia Historical Society, an independent educational and research institution, has a research center located in Savannah. The research center's library and archives hold the oldest collection of materials related to Georgia history in the nation.