Swing State Deep Dive: Georgia

At last, we turn to the Pennsylvania of the south: Georgia. The Peach State is making headlines as a needed win for former President Donald Trump and a desired bonus for Vice President Kamala Harris. With 16 electoral college votes and a rapidly growing black and Latino population, this one-time Republican stronghold is now a closely watched battleground.

Georgia has been making headlines since 2020 when Joe Biden managed to flip the state and eke out a narrow, 0.3-point win (12,000 votes). Comparatively, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a more impressive 5.1 points (211,000 votes) in 2016. Trump’s narrow loss in 2020 made him all the more stubborn when it came to conceding the race to Biden.

Georgia was the center of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign, and he ignited a series of legal challenges that reverberated throughout the state and the nation. Investigations found no evidence of substantial fraud, but Trump and his allies continue to prop up the narrative that in Georgia (among other states), the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats. 

Several Trump believers banded together to propose a rule change they believe will root out any fraudulent ballots come November. Georgia’s election workers will have to hand count the number of ballots cast after voting is completed, something bipartisan election officials say will delay the counting of votes.

Trump’s actions in Georgia also propelled a grand jury to accuse the former president and 18 others of illegally trying to overturn the presidential election in the state, citing the fact that Trump called Georgia’s top election official and pleaded with him to “find” the votes necessary to call the race in favor of Trump. The case, one of many in Trump’s ongoing legal saga, is currently stalled and will not go to trial before the election.

Things have been rocky between Trump and other Georgia officials, too. At a campaign rally in August, Trump made clear his frustrations with popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump believed was not doing enough campaigning on Trump’s behalf.

Kemp, the former president said, is “a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor.” In typical Trump fashion, he demeaned Kemp by calling him “little Brian” twice and threw salt in the wound by accusing Kemp’s wife of party disloyalty, too.

GOP officials worry that Trump might have made an enemy when he should have been cultivating a friendship, especially given that Kemp is known for turning out traditional Republicans and independent voters in droves, two groups whose support Trump could benefit from.

Trump’s six-week-old comments seem not to have done too much damage to his image among Georgia voters, however. He currently leads Harris by 1.4 points in the RCP Average, his second-largest leading margin of all the swing states. Of those polls released in September, Harris has only led in one; a recent FOX News poll placed Harris up one point. Trump has led by as much as four in certain polls, like the most recent NY Times/Siena College poll.

Both candidates have recently visited Georgia to hit on their respective classics. Trump campaigned in Savannah on Sept. 24 and focused largely on immigration, while Harris last visited Georgia on Sept. 20 when she spoke in Atlanta about abortion access.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, planned to visit Georgia late last week but was forced to cancel his events due to Hurricane Helene, which has left several parts of the southeast utterly devastated. Vance will be in the headlines this week as he gears up to face off with Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in what is the first and likely only vice-presidential debate.

Trump and Harris have only debated once, but the Harris campaign has made it clear they would like to see a second matchup between the two candidates. They are going so far as to try to shame the former president into another debate. 

Harris ran a new ad on ABC, which aired during the University of Georgia v. University of Alabama game on Saturday, a highly anticipated matchup with an audience of devoted swing state voters.

“Winners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it’s anytime, anyplace. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home,” the narrator starts, before cutting to a clip of Harris speaking at a rally.

“Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris says.

The Trump campaign responded by saying that “Kamala Harris would never show up to a sporting event like this because she’d get booed out of the stadium and embarrass herself.”

The race, it seems, is becoming more and more heated – and personal – as neither candidate has managed to make serious headway in the polls. Georgia is likely to continue to be a seat of the country’s divisions, as both candidates know what a victory in the Peach State could mean to them.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is one of Trump’s closest surrogates, underlined the importance of the state: “If we don’t win Georgia, I don’t see how we get to 270.”