After years of painstaking grassroots organizing and campaigning, the race for president in Georgia is set to enter its most crucial phase next week when early in-person voting begins and rival candidates finally kick their political machines into high gear.
As the Tuesday start of the three-week period nears, there’s a rare consensus from campaigns that have battled each other through the year. For all the bluster on the campaign trail, they agree on this much: Georgia remains up for grabs.
With polls showing a deadlocked race, even a slight change in turnout, a minor swing in voter patterns or small breaks of undecided voters could prove decisive in a state that both campaigns have coveted since Democrat Joe Biden’s razor-thin win in 2020.
“It’s going to be a close election. It’s going to be won on the margins,” was how Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock put it at a canvassing event this week.
Pennsylvania remains the biggest of the battleground prizes, the epicenter of the most campaign spending and the bulk of visits from the dueling candidates.
But Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are also escalating their fight for Georgia, a state so crucial to Republican hopes that it’s often described as a “must win” — and a vital insurance policy for Democrats in case of Rust Belt losses.
Four years after Biden’s narrow victory upended Georgia politics, Democrats here are once again scrambling to reassemble the jigsaw puzzle that propelled a victory so close it took days of vote tallying to confirm.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
That coalition relied on not just surging turnout among the liberals and Black voters who make up the party’s loyal base, but also on independent-minded split-ticket voters with a history of voting for GOP contenders. Democrats have spent years trying to piece that coalition back together.
“We’ve invested all year with the understanding that Georgia and a few other battlegrounds would be this close,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s director of battleground states, citing the roughly 200 Harris staffers in about 30 offices across the state.
“The infrastructure and the team we’re building is in a great position,” he added, “but we do recognize it’s going to be very close.”
If Georgia’s midterm election in 2022 is any guide, Trump’s campaign enters with the built-in advantage of a GOP-leaning electorate. Two years ago, Republicans swept every statewide office save for one — Herschel Walker’s Trump-backed bid for the U.S. Senate.
But Warnock’s defeat of Walker’s scandal-plagued campaign also proved a reminder of the limits of GOP loyalty. To prevail, Trump must not only energize his party’s white, evangelical and rural base but also win back swing voters who have bolted from him.
Top Republicans hope many will follow the lead of Gov. Brian Kemp, who recently reconciled with Trump weeks after the former president renewed an old line of attack against Kemp, threatening party unity.
“It’s going to be close. Everybody’s doing their part,” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a top Trump ally. “You can’t do everything every consultant suggests you do. I do think 2022 showed we’re still a red state, and we can win Georgia if our people show up.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Much remains up in the air. Will Harris’ base of Black voters turn out in strength for her, or do the polls hinting at lagging support from her party’s base reflect a broader weakness?
Can Trump find a way to recapture the independent-minded voters who once balked at his campaign even as he continues spreading falsehoods and stoking fights within the GOP that drove some away in the first place?
And how will voting patterns change since the last presidential race, which was defined by a coronavirus-driven surge of mail-in votes and led to a controversial Republican-backed rewrite of voting rules?
‘No brakes’
Georgia’s 16 electoral votes provide one of the two biggest troves — along with North Carolina — of any battleground state outside of Pennsylvania. And the candidates are pouring resources into the state.
Roughly $190 million has been spent on political ads in Georgia since the Super Tuesday contests in March, according to the AdImpact tracking firm. And Democrats have booked about $7 million more in ads in Georgia than Republicans for the final stretch of the race.
The campaigning is spread across the state. When Trump sharpened his economic agenda, he used Savannah as the backdrop. When Harris made her first speech focused on abortion since becoming the nominee, she gave it to an adoring Cobb County crowd.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
And both candidates crisscrossed Georgia last week to survey damage wrought by Hurricane Helene, as Trump journeyed to Valdosta and both ventured separately to Augusta. Trump used his latter visit to double as an in-person reconciliation with Kemp to project unity despite their tortured past.
Georgia voters have also seen a different side of the contenders. Trump stumped for votes at a Vine City Chick-fil-A and tossed popcorn to fans at the Georgia-Alabama game. Harris watched band practice at a coastal high school and swung by legendary Paschal’s in Atlanta. Their running mates grabbed doughnuts in Valdosta and discovered Georgia Tech campus lore.
Polling averages show Trump clinging to a one-point lead over Harris in the state, but most of those surveys also show the Democrat’s support lagging beyond historic levels among Black voters.
The most recent poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for instance, indicates 77% of Black voters back Harris’ candidacy — about 11 percentage points behind Biden’s 2020 performance. Many party leaders say they’re confident she’ll pull closer to Biden’s mark by November.
Erick Allen, a former state legislator who once led Cobb County’s Democratic Party, said he was more anxious about Harris’ fortunes in Georgia until a few days ago, when she launched a media blitz. She’s making up for lost time, he said.
“People are looking for a reason to not vote for Trump. She’s got to give them permission that it’s OK,” said Allen, who added that his attitude shouldn’t be mistaken for overconfidence.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “It’s still up to the electorate, and we just don’t know who’s going to turn out.”
Ask top GOP strategists what keeps them up at night, and many say they fret about the fate of the swing voters who propelled both Kemp and Warnock to victory in 2022. Harris’ campaign is aggressively courting that group with help from former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and other Republican Trump dissidents.
“It’s those persuadable voters that are going to end up being who decides this race,” said Cody Hall, a senior political adviser to Kemp who points to Trump’s slim but steady lead in polling averages. “And I honestly can’t say I know who has the edge with those folks.”
Trump’s campaign is banking that many of those voters will follow Kemp’s lead and make peace with Trump. But the latest AJC poll indicates about 1 in 9 independent voters remain undecided.
Rob Colquett of Cobb County backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in Georgia’s Republican primary but has yet to settle on either of the major party candidates.
“I mean, something could turn at the last minute,” Colquett said. “Honestly, I don’t think it will, but if one of them comes out and shows me something and actually has some standards behind what they say, and some follow-through, then I might be interested.”
The next weeks will only get more frenzied, with more visits by the candidates and their top allies planned and new efforts by volunteers to target likely — and unlikely — voters.
Seanie Zappendorf of Dawsonville estimated she’s made thousands of calls for Trump and spent countless hours knocking on North Georgia doors stumping for the former president.
“I’m putting in as much time as I can,” she said.
Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon described the final stretch in four words that the Harris’ camp might agree with.
“All gas,” he said. “No brakes.”
