By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Vice President Kamala Harris makes her first trip to Georgia as a presidential candidate on Tuesday, holding a rally with Grammy-winning rapper Megan Thee Stallion in a state that some Democrats now consider up for grabs in the November election.
With less than 100 days left in one of the least predictable campaign seasons in recent history, Democrats are polling voters in swing states anew and redrawing their map to victory.
Harris will hold a political event in Atlanta at 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) with Megan Thee Stallion, the Harris campaign said.
The rapper, whose album "Megan" recently launched at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart, confirmed on Instagram that she was heading down to support Harris in a special performance.
"ATL HOTTIES SEE YOU TOMORROW...," she wrote in a caption accompanying the news.
She joins a host of musicians who have recently come out in support of Harris' bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee in the Nov. 5 election.
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff said on MSNBC over the weekend that Harris' entry into the race "has put Georgia in play" for Democrats and predicted she will win.
Swing states like Georgia, which Democrats barely won in a hard-fought battle in 2020, are fiercely contested because they can lean either to Republicans or Democrats and play a decisive role in presidential elections.
FiveThirtyEight, the poll aggregation site, shows Republican Donald Trump leading Harris by between one and five percentage points in surveys taken after Harris became the likely Democratic candidate.
President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid on July 22 and endorsed Harris for the Nov. 5 vote against Trump. Since then, Harris's election campaign has raised $200 million, signed up 170,000 new volunteers and she has significantly outperformed Biden in recent polling among young people, Black voters and Hispanic voters.
A New York Times/Siena College national poll published Thursday found Harris has narrowed a sizable Trump lead; Trump had a two percentage point lead in a Wall Street Journal poll published on Friday. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published July 23 showed a two point lead for Harris.
Biden's campaign saw a narrowing path to victory with the "Sun Belt states," including Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, as unlikely wins. Georgia backed Biden by 0.2 percentage points, just under 12,000 votes in 2020, and Trump by around 5 percentage points in 2016.
Andy Beshear, the twice-elected Democratic governor of deep-red Kentucky, visited Georgia over the weekend to campaign for Harris in the Republican stronghold of Forsyth County.
The Harris campaign is vetting him along with Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota as possible vice presidential candidates. A decision is expected by Aug. 7.
Harris is leaning into her resume as a former district attorney and California attorney general, seeking to draw a contrast with Trump who is the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes.
Trump and 14 co-defendants are accused of racketeering and other charges for their role in attempting to overturn Biden's narrow win in Georgia.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Stephen Coates and Deepa Babington)
Local Georgia State
Most Popular
Comments / 0