(NEXSTAR) — Late Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump was named the winner in Georgia, earning the state's 16 electoral votes. It was a major win for the Republican, whose election night has already earned him several state wins, including Texas, Florida and Ohio. In numerous pre-election night projections, the battleground state was considered a toss-up between Harris and Trump — though Trump was favored to take the state based on recent polling. Georgia’s population of just over 11 million people is about a third Black and over 50% is female, two demographics the Harris campaign has polled well with. However, recent polls that suggested Trump was gaining some traction with Black voters.  Pres. Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia back in 2020, earning just 11,779 more votes than incumbent Donald Trump, according to Associated Press reporting. Biden was the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Many may remember Georgia was a major fixture in the 2020 election, after Trump called secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to overturn the state’s election results. Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn 2020 results currently stand as a criminal case in Fulton County, although it’s currently on hold while the former president’s legal team pursues a pre-trial appeal to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case and the indictment tossed.  The Georgia Court of Appeals will hear those arguments after the election. But in the wake of the 2020 election, many new measures have been placed around how 2024’s election results will be protected. In Georgia specifically, a state court recently blocked a new rule by the Georgia State Election Board that would have required all Georgia ballots to be counted by hand — which would have negatively impacted accuracy and expediency, according to the court. In 2020, as election denialism reached a fever pitch, many, particularly GOP politicians began promoting hand counting as a way of alleviating potential voter fraud, though no significant voter fraud in the 2020 has been found to date. This is in addition to experts and studies finding that machine vote-counting is more accurate than hand counting. Though no winner has yet been declared for the entire race, Tuesday night’s Georgia win for Trump is a huge boost in a presidential race that will likely come down to a handful of battleground states. The Associated Press contributed to this report.