The Democratic Party will hold its convention in Chicago on Monday and the Peach State will be heavily represented.

Georgia will provide 108 pledged delegates and another 15 automatic delegates, better known as superdelegates, all of whom are expected to support Vice President Kamala Harris in her efforts to win the state and reclaim the White House.

A full list of speakers has not yet been released, but recent conventions have featured well-known Georgia figures such as Stacey Abrams and Jason Carter, and Georgia’s delegation is expected to hear from key Democratic figures from across the country.

Harris was at the top of the list last month after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election and backed her to run in his place. Delegates quickly joined her camp, and no challengers for the nomination emerged before a virtual DNC vote earlier this month.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, called the candidate switch a coup and an attack on democracy. But Democratic voters seem to see things differently. Polls suggest that Harris’ rise to the top of the ticket has boosted Democrats’ chances in key swing states, including Georgia.

Parker Short believes that it is difficult to overestimate the enthusiasm with which the Democrats look forward to the party convention.

Short is the famously enthusiastic president of the Young Democrats of Georgia, who caused a viral sensation last month when a video went viral showing him singing and dancing at Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Atlanta, shortly after she was named the likely nominee.

And he is just as motivated today, as the 22-year-old delegate from Georgia prepares to make Harris and Tim Walz the party’s official nominees.

“It’s no secret that everything changed when Harris was nominated. The mood changed, the dynamic changed, the energy changed,” Short said. “It was like we had an espresso and taken a nice nap and were really ready to go out there.”

Short said left-leaning voters have been yearning for a candidate who could stand up to Trump, and they feel they have found just that in Harris. The energy surrounding the campaign reminds him of the nationally watched U.S. Senate runoffs in early 2021 that elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and gave Democrats control of the chamber.

But Joshua McKoon, chairman of the Republican Party in Georgia, argues that the growing enthusiasm among Democrats is merely a “sugar rush.”

“It’s like someone drinking a sugary Coke. You get a sugar rush and then the crash comes,” McKoon said last week on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Political Georgia” podcast. “And the crash will come. It may come on Sept. 10. It may come before then. But sooner or later (Harris) will be exposed to unscripted discussions, whether it’s with President Trump or reporters, and that’s when it will really kick in.”

Under pressure, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump finally agreed to a debate with Harris on September 10. Harris and her allies had heavily criticized Trump for pulling out of a debate that was scheduled when Biden was still considered the expected Democratic nominee.

The Democrats will have their work cut out for them, especially in contested states like Georgia, but Short says the energy behind Harris and Walz is anything but fleeting.

“This is not a sugar shock. We’re running a marathon and they’re just a little bit scared that we’re faster. They look behind us and think, ‘There’s no way we can keep up this pace.’ Sorry, our candidate isn’t 80 anymore,” Short said.

Zachary Peskowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, said he viewed Harris’ momentum since entering the race as a “turbocharged convention” that will soon be just a memory.

After all, it is not the only unexpected turn of events that has sparked a one-sided wave of support in this year’s presidential election campaign. Just a month ago, an assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania left many feeling that the election campaign was as good as over.

It is possible that the race will not begin to stabilize until after Labor Day, Peskowitz said.

But the Harris effect is likely to have long-term implications for the Georgia campaign. Her campaign quickly set its sights on a state Biden narrowly won in 2020, held one of its first rallies in Atlanta and included Savannah in a planned national campaign tour before Hurricane Debby intervened.

Whether Georgia will play a major role during the convention remains to be seen. There were few speakers from Georgia at the Republican convention, but polls at the time had Trump ahead there, too. Some forecasters now think Georgia is neck-and-neck, but Peskowitz said he thinks Trump would still be the slight favorite if the election were held today.

“Even though the state isn’t explicitly mentioned, I think a lot of the messaging is aimed at doing well in Georgia and increasing the likelihood that Democrats will keep the state in November,” he said.

Harris still has a lot of work to do to win over voters who disapprove of Biden’s economic performance, Peskowitz said.

“This is especially important when you talk about the Atlanta suburbs and moderate voters who are not strongly aligned with either party. Their assessments of Biden’s economic performance are not as positive, and so I think that will be an issue for Harris,” he said.

In the run-up to the convention, Harris presented her first detailed economic policy proposal on Friday. In it, she outlined how she would like to mitigate rent increases, increase the number of first-time home buyers, put an end to price gouging in the grocery store and increase the child tax credit.

While the speeches, glitz and glamour may be fun, the real work is not televised, says Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory University.

“The outcome of the convention, or the most important thing for Kamala Harris in Georgia in particular, is building her campaign team and her staff, and that’s happening behind the scenes,” she said.

“Her chance of winning this race depends on whether she can put together a flawless voter mobilization campaign,” she added. “Conventions don’t matter, rallies don’t matter, press releases don’t matter, but voters do matter, and you have to reach voters where they are. And she should focus primarily on mobilizing voters who are already inclined to support the Democratic Party.”