Republicans See Optimistic Signs in Battleground Georgia
ATLANTA—Voters in Georgia have been inundated with appeals for their support—campaign rallies, texts, and calls encouraging them to donate to one candidate or the other, and perpetual advertisements—for months now.
Billboards, yard signs, and bumper stickers expressing support for one candidate or the other litter Buckhead, a neighborhood to the north of Atlanta's city center.
Several Atlanta residents told The Epoch Times they're sick of it, and look forward to the end of the election season.
With Election Day just a day out, many have already cast their ballot in the Peach State.
According to the Georgia secretary of state, more than 4 million Georgians, more than 55 percent, of the state's 7.28 million active voters, have voted early or by absentee ballot.
While Georgia was once a solidly red state, demographic and political trends have made the state friendlier to Democrats in recent cycles.
In 2020, candidate Joe Biden received Georgia's 16 electoral voters by a razor-thin 0.24 percent margin, or just 11,779 votes. It marked the first time since 1992 that a Democrat carried the Peach State.
Also in 2020, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won their Senate bids, the first time Georgia had two Democrats in the Senate since 2003. Two years later, Warnock again beat off a challenge from former football star Herschel Walker.
But though Democrats have had a run of good luck in the state in recent years, maintaining that edge this year could be difficult due to demographic shifts toward former President Donald Trump, particularly among young men and black voters.
Trump's strategy involves seizing as many new votes among these demographics as possible, along with ensuring that he increases turnout in the 129 Georgia counties that backed him in 2020.
Vice President Kamala Harris's strategy, meanwhile, hinges on high turnout in the areas around Atlanta and other urban centers, staunching the bleeding among crucial demographics, and increasing her share among women and college-educated whites, who have shifted to be more favorable to Democrats in recent cycles.
She likely needs to run up her total in the 30 urban and suburban counties that backed Biden in 2020 to counter the Trump campaign's efforts to increase turnout among low propensity and rural voters.
It's no secret that Trump in 2024 is heavily favored in the Peach State, however.
Most of them—124—are designated as "rural" by state officials—and are thus highly favorable to Trump. And indeed, in 2020, 129 counties in Georgia ultimately sided with Trump over Biden.
Biden's victory came from the handful of urban counties in the state, where favorable demographics turned out in droves for him. Still, it only barely pushed him over the line to win.
"Here is the deal: Georgia has 159 counties. The Democrats are going to lose at least 125 of those," Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, told The Epoch Times.
"They have to run up the numbers in the urban counties."
In 2020, he noted, Democrats' support was heavily concentrated in the counties that make up the Atlanta metropolitan area: "If you look at a color-coded map, it's all red with islands of blue. Nine of those [counties that voted for Democrats] are clustered in [the] Atlanta metro area."
Indeed, Biden only won three counties in the Atlanta area—Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb—and two outside it—Hancock and Clarke County—by a total of more than 70 percent of the vote. Many counties that did back Biden did so relatively narrowly, winning by less than 10 percent.
Trump, by contrast, won dozens of rural counties by greater than 70 percent margins, including some where Biden received only single-digit support.
Thus, Bullock said, for Democrats, the strategy is to "run up the totals and hope they hold on" when rural county votes are counted.
Daniel Cronrath, a government professor at Florida State University at Jacksonville, said that early returns in Fulton County, the seat of Atlanta's city center, on election night will be revealing of national trends.
"[Georgia is] kind of a microcosm with what you see in other states," Cronrath said. "If Fulton County doesn't turn out, it is going to be a long night for Harris. Harris has a turnout model that relies on Fulton County and some of those other Atlanta area counties."
For Trump, meanwhile, the strategy is to run up his totals and draw out low-propensity voters in the state's GOP-favorable counties.
Cobb County Republican chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs told The Epoch Times, "Our thing is to concentrate on our local candidates as well as the federal elections, and our tactic is to just get out ... the low propensity Republican voter ... people who didn't get out for the primary or 2022, 2020 votes."
Grubbs is also hoping Republicans can expand their margins in light blue counties like Cobb. In 2020, Biden won Cobb County—part of the Atlanta metro area—by 14.3 percent.
"We're definitely thinking this is a winnable county," Grubbs said. "There are more people motivated than ever before and people are fed up."
According to early voting data from the secretary of state, there are some positive signs for Trump in the state.
In several northern counties, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of Trump in 2020, early turnout has already been high.
Towns County, for instance—a county where 80 percent of residents backed Trump in 2020—has the highest early turnout in the state today, with 72.2 percent of active voters in the county having already cast a ballot.
By contrast, in Clayton County—an Atlanta-area county where 85 percent of residents backed Biden—43 percent have already voted.
Ultimately, however, the outcome is likely to hinge on black turnout and support in predominantly black counties—but among this historically Democrat-faithful bloc, too, there are warning signs for Harris.
That year, black voters made up an estimated 28 percent of the statewide electorate. Their vast support for Biden was enough to push the state just over the tipping point.
But it's unclear if Democrats will be able to motivate as much turnout as they did in 2020 among the crucial bloc—or to win as much support among those who do go to the polls.
Atlas Intel, which was among the most accurate national pollsters in 2020, showed in an October poll signs of dwindling support for Democrats among black voters.
Joe Lou, a 68-year-old Uber driver, said that he and "everybody" he knows supports Trump—particularly young black men.
"Folks are finally waking up—that we voted for [Democrats] for 40 years, and all we have is bigger, worse ghettos," Lou said.
Through much of her campaign, Harris has focused on targeting the female vote, emphasizing abortion access as a key pillar of her campaign.
As women tend to vote in higher numbers than men in Georgia and elsewhere, it's a viable strategy. In 2020, 56 percent of the Georgia electorate was female.
Sarah Chamberlain, who leads The Main Street Republican Partnership, focuses on trends among women.
"Certainly, Harris is playing for the female vote," Chamberlain said.
She told The Epoch Times that in her polling, she's found that even some pro-life women have been frightened by strict abortion laws.
Chamberlain wasn't confident in Trump's prospects in winning over a larger share of women, particularly in the midst of the abortion issue and other social issues, which she described as more important to women than they are for men—particularly among younger women. Several young women who spoke to The Epoch Times cited abortion, or a dislike of Trump's personality, as leading issues.
Men, Chamberlain said, tend to be far more focused on the economy.
Increasing support among female voters "is not [Trump's] play. I think his play is to get the men," Chamberlain said.
Trump has historically won men by relatively broad margins, lagging behind among 18-to-29-year-old men but outperforming among men aged 30 and older. In Georgia, young men already tended to be more Republican, with 53 percent backing him in 2020 compared to 46 percent that backed Biden.
This year, Trump seems poised to improve substantially among male voters.
The dozens of young men The Epoch Times spoke to across Georgia and other states, even among those who support Harris, consistently expressed that their leading issue is the economy. Many others mentioned Trump's personality as a draw to the candidate.
But the outcome in Georgia will ultimately hinge on Election Day turnout, even as nearly half of the state's active electorate has already cast a ballot.
