Is Georgia a true ‘battleground’ state this election? What Trump, Biden campaigns say

The 2020 presidential election is only one month away, and polls show the two leading candidates are neck-and-neck in Georgia.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are fighting to gain a lead in the state as recent polls show the candidates less than a few percentage points apart.

Although voters in rural Georgia typically vote Republican, the presidential election in Georgia will be determined in Atlanta and the suburbs, said Eric Tanenblatt, a veteran Republican operative and fundraiser in Georgia.

“The demographics in the state are changing and have been changing. … If the Democrats continue to make gains in suburban Atlanta, that really matters,” he said. “If the president can’t carry Georgia, I think he’s got some real problems.”

A Data for Progress poll puts Biden and Trump at 46% each in Georgia with 8 percent of people undecided. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed Trump leading slightly at 47.3% and Biden at 47% with 4.4% undecided. Biden was leading at 50% to Trump’s 47% in a Quinnipiac University poll, and a Monmouth University poll had Trump up 47-to-46% in Georgia, according to Politico.

Trump spent more than $6 million in Georgia in September. Combine that with his GOP allies and more than $11 million was spent in the state, which is more than double the amount his party spent in Michigan, according to a McClatchy DC article. Biden spent $840,000 in Georgia in September, but he outspent Trump in states like Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.

The campaign and response to recent polls

Biden’s campaign announced Sept. 28 that it was pushing “its paid media offensive into the key battleground expansion states Georgia and Iowa,” according to a news release.

“I know that anyone who is following can see that we’re trending in the right direction. We’ve been doing a remarkable amount of work for a long period of time, and we’re confident that we’re going to be able to make Georgia the battleground state that we know that it is,” Simone Bell, the senior advisor in Georgia for Biden for President, told the Telegraph.

Trump’s campaign opened a Macon office in August and has held several events throughout Georgia, including a Women for Trump bus tour and a Black Voices for Trump event in Atlanta, said Savannah Viar, Georgia press secretary for Trump Victory.

“We are here to continue our ground game and continue our drumbeat of door knocking and phone banking, which is something, quite frankly, that the Biden campaign has not done,” she said. “They parachuted staff into Georgia at the last minute, and they’re doing a bunch of virtual events, which we did during the shutdown and during the initial stages of COVID-19 shut down, but we’ve since flipped back over to doing in-person.”

Bell said the Biden campaign is working virtually mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic, but they have held more than 1,000 virtual events, she said.

Georgia hasn’t elected a Democratic president since Bill Clinton, but party members in Georgia have been working to turn the state blue for many years, Bell said.

“We’ve been doing this work for a very long time. We didn’t just start in 2020,” she said. “Over those past 10 years, we have, as Democrats, blanketed the state. We’ve done an enormous amount of voter registration and education. With 2016, we were able to build an infrastructure. We capitalized on that in 2018 with the (Stacey) Abrams (gubernatorial) campaign.”

Who are the campaigns targeting in Georgia?

The Georgia campaigns do have one commonality: they are a campaign for everyone.

“We are targeting all voters in the state of Georgia,” Viar said. “We think that our deliverables speak for themselves and that’s what we’re talking to voters about when we’re on the ground, when we’re door knocking, when we’re phone banking, when we’re having MAGA meetups or events. The results are there and it’s easy to point to.”

Viar pointed to funding for the Savannah Expansion Project and the economy prior to the coronavirus pandemic as examples of Trump’s victories for Georgia while in office.

“This ticket is for everyone, and this is a ticket that is absolutely going to protect the rights and the needs of everyone. We are offering a return to civility and a return to the White House being seen as top caliber and America being seen as top caliber in the world...folks really are going to want more of that,” Bell said.

Adam Wollner, politics editor at McClatchy DC, contributed to this article.

This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 6:50 AM.