I've lived in Georgia a vast majority of my life, and November 4th was the first presidential election I was able to vote in.
Since the beginning of September, I had been rambling to virtually everybody I knew that Obama was not only going to take Georgia by a slim margin, but also that Jim Martin would be elected to the U.S. Senate. I remember vividly walking into the living room from the kitchen a while after the Georgian polls had closed and seeing the numbers begin to roll in. It began something like 65% for McCain, 32% Obama. To say the least, I was completely crushed. The RCP average for Georgia had McCain just barely 4 points ahead of Obama on election day, and Georgia had gone blue in the not-so-distant Clintonian era, so I truly believed it was possible with the 2 million early voters already that Obama was going to take it. Well, it turns out that while people rushed to the early polls (I had to wait 2 hours to early vote), nobody seemed to really turn out for the super, super Tuesday (my parents had absolutely no waiting time in the middle of election day). The small samples taken of the early polls in Georgia the day before Tuesday showed a huge margin in favor of Obama, so this further pushed my hope into confidence into arrogance.
While the margin that Obama lost by wasn't tremendous but, in fact, pretty impressive, he still lost. It appeared that Martin held about the same fate and that Georgia was unquestionably still a member of the red-locked South.
There is, however, still hope for this senate seat. The McCain supporters here are demoralized, having removed the McCain signs from the lawn while the Obama signs remain. Seeing an Obama presidency on the horizon has rejuvenated the Democratic spirit of this area, and I've begun falling into the same mood I had a month before the election. I'm confident in future-senator Martin, and I refuse to settle for anything less.