Published August 2, 2024
Georgia has been on Donald Trump’s mind since his achingly close margin of defeat there in 2020. This time around, polls suggest he won’t need a post-election phone call to state election officials to find him the votes — he’s gaining the votes he needs to win all on his own.
The former president had maintained a continuous lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average over the incumbent president here since last year. Joe Biden hadn’t led in a single poll since November. Had he stayed in the race, its outcome was nearly a foregone conclusion.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry into the contest has only served to narrow Trump’s polling lead. Trump is ahead by 2.5 points in the two polls taken since her surprising emergence. His lead drops to 1.5 points when all third-party candidates are removed from the poll question, showing he can win a one-on-one contest. That’s not a landslide, but it’s enough to flip Georgia’s crucial 16 Electoral College votes into his column.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
