Topline
Former President Donald Trump is on track to flip Georgia after losing to President Joe Biden there in 2020, but polls show a tight race in the state that shifted from red to purple during Trump’s tenure, propelled by diversification in Atlanta’s suburbs.
Key Facts
Most reputable polls over the past month show Trump ahead in Georgia, including a Quinnipiac University poll that found him up by six points over Vice President Kamala Harris and a Cook Political Report survey that shows him up by two points, while a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll shows them tied.
Trump is favored to win Georgia by 1.3 points in FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker and by 1.5 points in RealClearPolitics’ 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.
Contra
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.
Big Number
2.5. That’s how many points Harris leads Trump by nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker, while RealClearPolitics’ poll tracker shows her up 2.1 points.
Key Background
Georgia is one of seven swing states likely to decide who wins the presidential election. Poll trackers show Harris leading Trump in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, while Trump leads in North Carolina and Georgia. 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.
Further Reading
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)
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