LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — A gated community of regal brick homes with impeccable landscaping and $450,000 price tags might seem an unlikely place for a voter-registration drive. The neighborhood, with its swimming pool and tennis courts, evokes stability and a sense of having arrived.

But when Maria Palacios, 24, a part-time canvasser for a Latino rights advocacy group, knocked on doors on a sweltering summer afternoon, she was greeted by those who had never cast ballots, immigrants like herself — newcomers from Korea, Vietnam, India, Pakistan and Mexico, all faces of a changing Georgia.

“There are a lot of people here from Mexico like us,” said Hector Velazco, an information technology consultant, telling Ms. Palacios that he and his wife are awaiting naturalization so they can vote. “It’s not only workers to mow the grass.”

This is the new Georgia, a state whose transformed economy has spawned a population boom and demographic shifts that are slowly altering its politics. With African-Americans coming in large numbers from other states, and emerging immigrant communities like this one in Lawrenceville, Georgia is less white and less rural than it was a decade ago.

Yet for all the changes and what they may portend, Georgia’s politics — including a closely watched Senate race between the Democrat Michelle Nunn and the Republican David Perdue — are today playing out largely on the familiar terrain of black and white.

Black Democrats have long held power in Atlanta, but in the state legislature Republicans — who are nearly all white — outnumber Democrats two to one. Political debates center on issues like curbing illegal immigration and expanding gun rights. And many of Georgia’s new immigrants do not or cannot vote. If Democrats are to win statewide in November, they must increase turnout among minorities, especially blacks, and bring back moderate whites, especially women.

“Georgia is a conservative state — it was a conservative state when the Democrats were in control,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican who has been in public office nearly 40 years. “That Georgia is all of a sudden changing to be a different state, I think, is a myth. Georgia is continuing to be what it has been, which is a growth state with a diverse economy and a diverse population.”

Democrats, though, see a different future. “Georgia is next in line as a battleground state,” said Jason Carter, the Democratic nominee for governor (and a grandson of former President Jimmy Carter). “People may disagree about whether it’s red or blue. But everybody agrees that it’s changing.”

In 1980, Georgia was what Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia, calls “a black-and-white state.” Whites were 72 percent of the population and blacks, 26 percent. Now, Georgia’s population has more than doubled, to nearly 10 million. By last year, the state was 55 percent white, 31 percent black, 9 percent Latino (up from 1 percent in 1980) and nearly 4 percent Asian.