Savannah, GeorgiaVice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have both urged their supporters not to pay too much attention to the latest polls, but for very different reasons.
As the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stages, Harris is preaching caution amid a surge in fundraising and polling numbers since replacing President Biden as the Democratic national candidate six weeks ago, while Trump, while on the back foot, has a history of outperforming disappointing poll numbers, including during his 2016 campaign.
“This is going to be a close race all the way to the end,” Harris told supporters this week at a packed arena in the historic coastal city of Georgia, one of seven key battleground states that will determine the outcome of the presidential election.
Harris spoke Thursday after the release of a series of polls, including a new Fox News poll that showed the race within the margin of error in key battleground states and a slight lead in three national polls.
Latest Fox News poll results in four key battleground states
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at a rally at EnMarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, on August 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
But the vice president told the crowd at Savannah's EnMarket Arena, “Let's not pay too much attention to the polls because we're running behind the times.”
“We have hard work ahead of us. But we love hard work. Hard work is good work,” Harris said to cheers. “With your help, we're going to win in November.”
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Trump, who is running to reclaim his old job in the White House, has repeatedly denied Harris' rising popularity and touted his own position.
“She's not succeeding. I'm succeeding,” Trump told Martha MacCallum in an interview on Fox News Channel last week. “I'm doing great with Hispanic voters. I'm doing great with black men and women. I'm doing very well in the polls.”
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Potterville, Michigan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
For much of this year, polls had predicted a close rematch between Trump and Biden in 2020. After Biden's disastrous defeat in the Atlanta debate in late June, Trump built a small but significant lead in the weeks following.
But since Biden ended his reelection effort with a major announcement on July 21, Harris has benefited from increased media attention and improved prospects for the Democratic nominee.
Harris's rally in Savannah was the last of a two-day visit to southeast Georgia with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz, and arrived about two hours after giving her first network interview since becoming the Democratic representative.
Democratic presidential nominee Harris and running mate Tim Waltz of Minnesota step off the campaign bus in Savannah, Georgia, on August 28, 2024. (Sail Robe/AFP via Getty Images)
Georgia has long been a strongly Republican state in presidential elections, but Biden narrowly defeated Trump in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the state in nearly three decades.
In runoff elections two months later, Democrats recaptured both of the state's Republican-held Senate seats.
But fast forward to this summer, as Biden faced growing calls from within his own party for him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, Trump was beginning to build a lead in Georgia.
The state could decide the 2024 showdown between Harris and Trump
But Harris' visit this week signals that Democrats feel the state is once again at stake.
“Georgia, the last two elections, the voters of this very state have delivered,” Harris told the crowd. “You have delivered, and now we're asking you to do it again. Let's do it again.”
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris urged her supporters not to pay attention to the polls during a rally in Savannah, Georgia, on August 29, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Georgia's popular Republican governor agrees that the state is highly competitive.
“This is certainly a battleground state,” Gov. Brian Kemp said in an interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “I've said for a long time that the road to the White House is through Georgia. And there's no road for former President Trump to win without Georgia, and there's no road for Republicans to win 270 seats without Georgia.”
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But Kemp, who headlined a Trump fundraiser in Atlanta on Thursday, added that Georgia “is a state that we can win if we put all the mechanisms in place, and I'm working hard to provide those mechanisms in a variety of ways, to turn out the Republican vote and ensure that we win this state in November.”
Labor Day marks the start of the unofficial final sprint for the presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris (left) on July 30, 2024, and former President Donald Trump on August 3, 2024. Both photos were taken in Atlanta, Georgia. (AP Photo)
A week later, on September 10, Harris and Trump are scheduled to hold their first, and likely only, presidential debate in Philadelphia.
There are still more than two months until Election Day, but some voters will likely begin casting their ballots in the coming weeks.
In the battleground state of North Carolina, mail-in voting begins on September 6. Early voting in two other key battleground states, Pennsylvania, begins on September 16, and Michigan, begins on September 26.
Get the latest 2024 campaign updates, exclusive interviews and more on Fox News Digital's Election Hub.
