The latest survey of likely Georgia voters shows Vice President Kamala Harris with a narrow lead over former President Donald Trump, who is ahead in most other polls as he aims to flip the state after losing it to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, shakes hands with Georgia ... [+]
Harris leads Trump 48%-47% among likely voters in a New York Times/Siena poll released Sunday (margin of error 3.5 points), though two other polls this week show Trump with an advantage, and he’s also leading in polling averages.
Trump is up 48%-47% among likely voters in a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday (margin of error 4.7 points).
Trump also leads Harris 51%-46% in a Cooperative Election Study poll released last week (2,663 respondents, polled earlier this month as part of a national study sponsored by several universities).
Trump and Harris are tied at 49% among likely voters in a Marist poll out Oct. 24 (margin of error 3.9), while Trump leads Harris 49.9%-48.4% in a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll published Oct. 23, also marking a close-to-even race given the three-point margin of error.
Trump is up 47% to 43% among likely voters in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released Oct. 22 (margin of error 3.1), though with 8% of voters still undecided, the race could swing either way.
Most polls show Trump ahead in Georgia: Trump is favored to win Georgia by 1.5 points in FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker.
Until Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia by just under 12,000 votes, the state hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1992, but Georgia has moved to swing state status over the past decade as Democrats have improved their margins in federal and state elections.
Georgia’s shift from red to purple is widely credited to diversification in the Atlanta metro area, where the population grew by 15% between 2010 and 2020, while the white population shrank by 2%, according to the most recent census data.
Hillary Clinton won eight out of 10 counties in the Atlanta suburbs in the 2016 presidential election despite losing statewide, and former Rep. Stacy Abrams and President Joe Biden won most suburbs by even wider margins than Clinton in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign and 2020 presidential election, respectively, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis—reflective of a broader national leftward shift among suburban voters.
Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock also flipped Georgia’s Senate seats from red to blue in 2020, further cementing the state’s battleground status.
Republicans control the state Senate, the House and the governor’s office in Georgia and nine of its 14 representatives in Congress are Republicans. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has staved off challenges from former Democratic Rep. Stacy Abrams in both 2018 and 2022, and increased his victory from one to seven points in the most recent election.
Georgia is one of seven swing states likely to decide who wins the presidential election. Harris leads Trump in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, while Trump leads in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia, and the two are tied in Pennsylvania, according to the Silver Bulletin. The most likely path to victory for Harris runs through the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which have a combined 44 electoral votes. If she wins all three, plus all the other non-swing states Biden won in 2020, she would reach the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to win the election. If Trump wins one of the Rust Belt states (most likely Pennsylvania, according to polls), and also carries Georgia and North Carolina, then he would likely break 270.
Election 2024 Swing State Polls: Harris Leads By 1 Point In 7 Battlegrounds In Latest Survey (Forbes)
Trump Vs. Harris 2024 Polls: Harris Leads In 4 New National Surveys—Amid Virtual Tie In Swing States (Forbes)