Trump leads Biden in Georgia days before presidential debate, latest poll shows
A new poll shows Donald Trump is leading President Biden in Georgia — a key battleground state that is the site of Thursday’s first presidential debate.
Trump has a 5-point lead over the president, garnering 43% support from likely voters compared to Biden’s 38%, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll — which continues a positive trend for the former commander-in-chief in the Peach State.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also got 9% in the poll released Tuesday, while another 8% of likely voters were undecided.
One percent supported Libertarian Chase Oliver, another 1% said they would not vote, and the same percentage said “other candidate.”
Kennedy is not yet on the state’s ballot, but his campaign has said it is continuing to work on it.
Biden and Trump are set to go head to head for the first time in the 2024 election cycle in a debate hosted by CNN at 9 p.m. Thursday in Atlanta.
The AJC poll is in line with other recent polls showing Trump consistently ahead of Biden in Georgia. RealClearPolitics has Trump averaging 5.6% ahead of Biden in the state that he lost in 2020 by a margin of just .23%.
Despite his lead, the poll shows that Trump’s guilty verdict in his Manhattan “hush money” case has been influencing voter opinion there, at least among independents.
About one-third of the independent voters surveyed said the fact that he was convicted of all 34 charges against him makes them less likely to vote for him.
But the AJC poll also indicates that Biden is hemorrhaging support among Georgia’s black voters, a demographic that propelled him to victory in 2020 with an 88% backing in the Peach State.
With months left to go, Biden sits at 70% support among black voters in Georgia.
The incumbent is also unpopular with young voters.
Only 12% of those polled between the ages of 19 and 29 said they would vote for Biden.
The poll was conducted June 11-22 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, had a sample size of 1,000 likely voters and a margin of error of 3.1%.
