Allies of President Biden and former President Donald Trump set expectations for historic matchup.
As President Biden and former President Donald Trump inside CNN’s historic Techwood campus studio Thursday night, the Peach State will also be in the spotlight.
“The stakes are very high”, said Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat who represents the eastern Atlanta metro and suburbs. “And so to have this debate in Atlanta will help drive turnout for this very crucial and extremely high-stakes election.”
. With 16 electoral votes, the state’s explosive growth has drawn an increasingly diverse population with expanding Black, Latino and Asian American electorates.
Trump won the state in 2016 by 5 percentage points against Hillary Clinton. Mr. Biden flipped it in 2020 with a narrow advantage of roughly 12,000 votes. Trump and 18 co-defendants were charged with attempting to overturn the 2020 results in . In the current matchup, the former President leads Mr. Biden in Georgia 51%-48%, conducted earlier this year.
“I think people miss his policies”, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of northwest Georgia, told CBS News. “Inflation is one that is, you know, affecting so many people in Georgia, especially rural Georgia.”
This week both campaigns flooded the capital with voter outreach, press conferences, ads, surrogates and debate watch parties. The Biden-Harris campaign organized more than 1,600 events across battleground states. That included daily press briefings focused on issues ranging from reproductive rights to the economy, drawing local politicians like Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and former Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. The Trump campaign targeted some of its outreach to Black voters with Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida and Congressman Wesley Hunt of Texas “chopping it up” at barber shops and cigar lounges while RNC leaders made the rounds in Atlanta’s northern suburbs to discuss election integrity.
