(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off in the first presidential debate Thursday in Georgia, a battleground state that could ultimately decide the 2024 Election.
Georgia as a swing state
After going red in six consecutive elections, Biden was able to flip the state blue in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Bill Clinton. Subsequent victories by Sen. Jon Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, cemented Georgia as a legitimate swing state.
Since then, Trump has stormed back in the polls and currently leads Biden in the state by roughly four points, according to recent polling by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ election center.
“Donald Trump has substantially put his band back together, and he is back where he was before,” said NewsNation political editor Chris Stirewalt. “Joe Biden is missing a bunch of voters.”
Both candidates will be focused on suburban moderates around Atlanta, many of whom have turned away from Trump-backed Republicans in recent elections.
To win the state again, Biden will have to repeat his success in places like Cobb and Gwinnett County in the Atlanta metro area. But that may be challenging given persistent inflation, said Zachary Peskowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta.
“For those more moderate voters who could go either way, that’s going to be a very important consideration in shaping the outcome in Georgia,” he said.
The challenge in Georiga for Biden
Of all the key battleground states, Georgia might be the most traditionally Republican. GOP Governor Brian Kemp cruised to victory in 2022, and the party has controlled the state legislature since 2005.
That dynamic presents a debate challenge for Biden, who will try to link his policies to the state’s strong economy while attempting to distance himself from inflation at the grocery store.
“We have a fairly popular Republican governor who is going to soak up a lot of the credit for those local economic conditions, so it’ll be very important to see how Biden’s economic messaging comes across,” said Peskowitz.
In 2020, Biden won the state thanks to a coalition of suburban moderates, Black voters and young people, but polling suggests he’s struggling to persuade those same groups today.
The president’s support among young voters has plummeted, with just 12% of Georgians between 18 and 29 saying they’ll vote for him, according to a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) survey. Among Black Georgians surveyed, 70% said they’d back Biden, down significantly from four years ago when he earned 88% of the Black vote in the state, AJC said.
However, swing suburbanites around metro Atlanta may be Biden’s biggest vulnerability in the state.
“In Georgia, it’s much more of a persuadable problem than it is a base problem,” Stirewalt said. “Joe Biden has not delivered what [suburban voters] had hoped for, which was basically moderate caretaker governance.”
According to Decision Desk HQ, Biden has a 37% chance of winning in Georgia.
The challenge in Georgia for Trump
Moderate, college-educated suburbanites helped propel Biden to victory in 2020, and while they may not be excited about his presidency, it’s not a guarantee they will switch to Trump.
In 2022, then-Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker failed to win over those same voters and ultimately lost to Warnock.
“Republicans have made it very hard on themselves in Georgia — both at the presidential and senatorial level — because they continue to choose candidates that make it hard to keep the coalition together,” said Stirewalt.
Democrats will try to appeal to the thousands of voters who backed Kemp but didn’t support Walker, Stirewalt said. In Cobb County, Kemp won 47% of the vote in his successful reelection bid, while Walker earned just 40% in the Senate runoff.
Recent polling suggests Trump’s legal woes could be a major factor. Roughly 40% of Georgia moderates in the new AJC survey said they’re less likely to vote for Trump after he was convicted of falsifying business records — just 4% said the outcome made them more likely to back him.
The former president’s legal issues could be particularly important in Georgia, where he’s accused of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
Georgia’s Republican primary also showed signs of division. About 78,000 voters, mostly in metro Atlanta, voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump even after she had suspended her campaign.
The question is whether the Trump holdouts will support Biden or choose a different candidate. Around 15% of moderates in the state said they would vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if the election were held today, according to the AJC poll.
As it currently stands, Decision Desk HQ predicts Trump has a 63% chance of winning Georgia.