After all, the Peach State is at stake.
That’s according to a Landmark Communications poll of 400 Georgia voters conducted on Monday, the day after President Biden gave up his re-election bid.
The margin of error between Republican nominee Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is within the margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Trump’s approval rating is 45.8%, just 1.5% ahead of Harris in a six-candidate race that also includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (4%), independent Cornel West (1.1%), Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party (0.3% each).
The two-way election is even closer, with that scenario giving Trump 48% and Harris 46.7%, with the rest undecided.
It’s been less than 72 hours since Harris became an official presidential candidate, but the survey shows she is quickly solidifying the support of Georgia Democrats.
In a two-candidate race, she enjoys 93% support within her own party, compared with the 91.4% of Republicans who support Trump.
In a six-way scenario, Harris would also have a lead over the Republican standard-bearer in party support: She has the support of 88.8% of Democrats, a full percentage point higher than Trump among Republicans.
For those who’ve been paying attention lately, this shows that rank-and-file Democrats are aligned with their party leaders. Georgia Democrats enthusiastically endorsed the vice president earlier this week, with chairwoman Rep. Nikema Williams saying the party is “united” and “our eyes are set on victory and we’re ready to send her back to the White House as our president.”
Another feature of the Georgia race in this poll, which is likely to be replicated in other battleground states, is the stark gender disparity.
Harris has the support of 55.8% of women, while Trump has the support of 57.9% of men in the same situation.
The trend is similar when looking at a wider range of candidates, with 52.1% of women supporting Harris and 54.7% of men supporting Trump.
In this context, it is expected that the Harris campaign will do what the Biden-Harris campaign did before the top candidate change: last week they launched an ad in Atlanta called “Access,” which, according to the campaign, marks “the second anniversary of Georgia’s abortion ban,” an “extreme ban made possible only by Trump’s overturning of Roe.”
The ad focuses on “Black maternal health,” and not surprisingly, given that the vice president is the first Black woman to be nominated by a major party (barring the unexpected), Black voters overwhelmingly support Harris, who is running at 82% in the head-to-head matchup with Trump and 80% in the six-way race, trailing slightly behind Black professor Cornel West, who received 2%.
Perhaps most worrying for the Trump campaign is that, in this poll at least, Harris has an overwhelming lead among independents, leading Trump by 11.9 percentage points in a two-way contest (47.6% to 35.7%) and 9.1 percentage points in a six-way contest (40.9% to 31.8%). Kennedy, Stein and West are currently the favorites among independents, with Kennedy winning 9.1% of independents and West and Stein winning 2.3% each.
The survey looks much more favorable for Harris than an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released this week, though that was conducted before the reality of the candidate switch became clear.
The poll showed Trump leading Harris 50.5% to 45.9%. Trump’s lead over Harris is larger than the 3.5% advantage he had over the incumbent president in the same survey.
