Georgia at a Tipping Point [View all]

[RandySF]

There is perhaps no other state in which Mr. Trump’s recent slide in the polls has the potential to do as much collateral damage. In addition to staring down what could be their first presidential defeat in Georgia since 1992, Republicans stand to lose not one but two Senate seats if things don’t break their way. In both Senate races, the Trump-aligned Republican candidates have slipped in recent polls.

Those immediate vulnerabilities are colliding with a slow burn of demographic change that has thrown this once firmly Republican state into play. White residents now make up fewer than three in five voters in Georgia, and a wave of migration to the Atlanta area over the past decade has added roughly three quarters of a million people to the state’s major Democratic stronghold.

Which helps explain why this week Joseph R. Biden Jr. was able to nose out ahead of Mr. Trump in a range of polling averages. Surging alongside him are Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidates vying for the state’s two open Senate seats.

“One of the things I’m looking at is what we call the 30-30 rule,” said Trey Hood, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who directs its Survey Research Center. “Can a Democratic candidate get 30 percent of the white vote statewide, and do African-Americans constitute 30 percent of the electorate over all? If you can get to those levels as a Democrat, you’ve got a pretty good shot at winning.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/politics/georgia-polls-trump-biden.html