Democrat Jerica Richardson defeated Republican Fitz Johnson in the race to fill the seat of District 2 Commissioner Bob Ott on the Cobb County Board of Commissioners, and we’re going to examine from where in the district each candidate drew their strength.

This is the third in a series of articles taking a closer look at the dramatic results of the November 3 2020 election in Cobb County.

District 2 has been, until this election, a reliably Republican seat.

Along with District 4 Commissioner Lisa Cupid‘s defeat of incumbent Republican Chairman Mike Boyce, this election yielded the first majority Democratic Cobb BOC since the GOP gained control of the body in 1984 under Chairman Earl Smith.

The tally for Richardson was 53,776 or 50.49 percent of the vote. Johnson’s share of the vote was 52,724, or 49.51 percent of the total.

A good place to begin a closer look at the precinct level is this screenshot of the map showing the distribution of precincts Johnson won (in dark blue) and those Richardson won (in green).

As you can see, Richardson’s strength was in the southern part of the district including Smyrna, the two Marietta precincts in District 2, and all of Vinings except for Vinings 04.

Johnson’s strength was in East Cobb and Vinings 04.

Vinings 04 is one of a handful of precincts that delivered its votes to Joe Biden in the presidential race, but went with Republicans in local races.

We’ll be looking at Vinings 04 more closely in a later article. It’s an unusual precinct in that it’s a Republican-leaning precinct surrounded by Democratic-leaning precincts on the Cobb County side, but it’s adjacent to Republican-leaning Buckhead across the river in the City of Atlanta.

In the tables below I’ve linked to the map of each precinct, so by clicking on the name, you can get an idea of its boundaries and its placement on the larger map.

If you drill down into the precinct maps linked to below, you’ll find that Johnson did well in precincts running along Roswell Road, Sewell Mill Road, Post Tritt Road, Johnson Ferry Road … in fact along all the major corridors associated with East Cobb.

The corridors where Richardson was strong included South Cobb Drive, Atlanta Road, Oakdale Road, Concord Road, Cobb Parkway, Cumberland Parkway and the Cooper Lake Road area … in other words Smyrna, parts of Vinings and the Cumberland area.

Precincts won by Johnson

The following precincts were won by Fitz Johnson:

	Johnson	Richardson
Chestnut Ridge 01	1639	985
Dickerson 01	1381	942
Dodgen 01	1051	674
Eastside 01	1541	944
Eastside 02	1952	1329
Fullers Park 01	1623	1147
Hightower 01	2075	1371
Murdock 01	1941	1344
Mt Bethel 01	2056	1286
Mt Bethel 03	1494	1089
Mt Bethel 04	1484	882
Powers Ferry 01	1260	1104
Roswell 01	2668	1776
Roswell 02	1797	1217
Shallowford Falls 01	1667	1102
Sewell Mill 01	1502	1254
Sewell Mill 03	836	583
Sope Creek 01	1115	682
Sope Creek 02	1924	1636
Sope Creek 03	1385	859
Timber Ridge 01	1204	807
Vinings 04	1486	1115
Willeo 01	1416	897

Precincts won by Richardson

	Johnson	Richardson
Chattahoochee 01	1116	2669
Dobbins 02	519	1074
Marietta 6A	256	928
Marietta 7A	14	133
Nickajack 01	887	2538
Oakdale 01	1328	1682
Smyrna 1A	612	1818
Smyrna 2A	658	1556
Smyrna 3B	688	819
Smyrna 4A	1955	2203
Smyrna 6A	2017	2467
Smyrna 7A	1343	2420
Terrell Mill 01	1161	2310
Vinings 01	819	1452
Vinings 02	1638	2713
Vinings 03	1216	1969

In the next installment in this series we’ll take a look at the race for Cobb County Sheriff, in which longtime incumbent Neil Warren was unseated by Democratic challenger Craig Owens.