Can Kamala Harris win over Georgia?
Georgia has two Democratic senators and a Republican governor, giving both Donald Trump and vice-president Kamala Harris hope they can claim it in the US election.
The front porch of Nancy Todd’s suburban home is crammed with Kamala Harris yard signs, T-shirts and baseball caps ready for campaigners who arrive around the clock to pick up merchandise to fuel the Democrats’ attempt to hold the crucial state of Georgia.
In the leafy country around Atlanta that was key to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, Todd, secretary of Gwinnett County Democrats, likens enthusiasm for Harris among activists to the emergence of Barack Obama 16 years ago.
But Obama lost in Georgia twice and there are signs of fractures in the voter coalition Harris needs to keep alive her hopes of winning the state and, with it, a path to the White House through the southern and western swing states.
Polls are showing small but significant gains for Donald Trump among black men that could prove decisive in a state with the third highest black population and which he lost in 2020 by 11,779 out of five million votes – a margin of 0.23 percentage points.
Both sides expect another close battle with conflicting signs as to who is ahead: there was a record turnout this week of 843,991 in the first three days of early voting, which traditionally favours Democrats, but there was also improved polling for Trump, ahead by 52 per cent to 45 per cent among probable Georgia voters by a Quinnipiac University poll on Wednesday.
“My phone rings all day, every day – there was a lot of support for Joe Biden going up against Trump but that was more desperation, not true excitement. This is true excitement for Harris,” said Todd, 71, a distributor of election material in Lawrenceville, the county seat 30 miles north of central Atlanta.
Gwinnett is the second largest and most diverse county in Georgia, where Biden ran up 75,841 more votes than Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and improved her vote share from 50.2 to 58.4 per cent to seal his capture of the state. But four years of a Democrat in the White House have given some of those Biden voters pause, notably opponents of his Israel stance and others who felt better off under the Trump presidency.
“It’s very close,” Todd said. “I’ve gotten phone calls from Muslims saying that the people in their mosque are not going to vote … They’re not going to vote for him [Trump] but they’re not going to vote for her [Harris],” she said.
“I got a phone call today from a younger black guy, in his 30s or 40s, and he said, ‘my friends think that Trump sent them a cheque, [the government’s pandemic stimulus payment]’ because it had his name on it. So they think he actually sent them the money.”
Gwinnett may be part of the better-off Atlanta suburbs but it is not all pensioners in large homes in smart cul-de-sacs.
One reason why it has been tending towards the Democrats after backing Mitt Romney and John McCain against Obama is the arrival of younger, well-qualified Americans to work in growing tech, film, logistics and manufacturing sectors. It was 90 per cent white as recently as 1990, a figure now at 32.5 per cent with 26.9 per cent black residents, 23 per cent Hispanic and 13.2 per cent Asian-American.
“Based on where our trends are going over a decade, the destination for Georgia is to become a blue [Democrat] state,” said Brenda Lopez Romero, chair of Gwinnett County Democrats. “Whether that happens in 2024 … I think definitely by 2028 you will see Georgia solidifying more as a blue state.”
The uncertainty over Georgia’s political status – it has two Democratic senators and a Republican governor and legislature – makes it a prize that the Trump campaign believes it can claim back.
“It’s like 2016 all over again but better, the energy across the state is unbelievable,” said Morgan Ackley, the Team Trump Georgia communications director, during a break at Trump’s rally in the northwest Atlanta suburb of Cobb county on Tuesday. Trump is due to speak in Gwinnett county next Wednesday, while Harris returns for her third Atlanta rally of the campaign on Saturday.
“A lot of families are having to choose between gas for the car and putting food on the table - everyone understands this is a pocketbook election and we were better off under Donald Trump,” Ackley said, quoting inflation in the state of 21.8 per cent since 2021.
Kevlon Galloway, 25, one of the few black Georgians at Trump’s rally, said he voted for Biden but felt let down by the Democrats.
“In 2020 I was a first-time voter, I just went along with what I heard from my family and at my school. Then I moved to California and lived in a blue state and saw the homelessness and how they spend money and it doesn’t fix anything, I saw the black community that wasn’t doing great,” he said. “I think we need to give the Republicans a chance.”
As for Obama’s recent speech in Pittsburgh berating black men for considering Trump, Galloway said: “When Obama said that it was like ‘the Democrat Party owns black people’, like we can’t think for ourselves.”
Trump’s main messages to Georgians are about prices and border security, referring to the murder in February of Laken Riley, a nursing student killed while jogging at the University of Georgia in Athens. An illegal immigrant from Venezuela was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty.
Harris revived Democratic polling fortunes in Georgia to put back in play the sun belt route to the presidency through the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, which share some characteristics with sizeable black or Hispanic populations. It is seen as an alternative to her main route, holding the three swing states of the rust belt - Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - where Trump aims to retake the blue wall that fuelled his 2016 victory but which fell to Biden in 2020.
In March, polling for The Wall Street Journal suggested the sun belt was falling out of reach for Biden, with Trump ahead in all four states. The same poll this month found Harris ahead in Arizona by two points and Georgia by one point, and much closer in North Carolina at just one point behind Trump (but five behind in Nevada).
But the academic Andrew Pieper believes this remains a challenge for Harris as a way to the White House if Trump recaptures Pennsylvania, the largest rust belt battleground. “The sun belt alternative is mathematically possible but it doesn’t really seem practically possible,” said Pieper, from Kennesaw State University. “If you don’t win a state like Pennsylvania, which is more Democratic than North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona, it doesn’t seem plausible that you would end up winning [in the sun belt].”
“The presidential election is really evenly divided,” Pieper said. “I would say Trump is going to squeak through in Georgia … but I think there’s enough suburban women who are uncomfortable with Trump to make it a race for Democrats.”
The Times
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