Former President Donald Trump now leads President Joe Biden in Georgia, a state the Democratic incumbent won in 2020.
That’s according to a Siena College poll for The New York Times. Pollsters found that lead widens in a head-to matchup without Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other minor party candidates in the field.
Trump takes 39% of the vote to Biden’s 31% with a wide field of candidates as choices, with Kennedy taking a significant 9% of the vote. Likely Green Party nominee Jill Stein also received 1% of support, as did likely Libertarian nominee Lars Mapstead, while support for Cornel West did not register.
When pollsters asked respondents to consider only Trump or Biden, the Republican’s support surged to 49%, a near-majority. Biden took just 39% of support in the head-to-head matchup with of 12% undecided or refusing to answer.
Pollsters reported a 4.6% margin of error on the Georgia results. In the match-up of major party nominees, that put’s Trump’s level of support outside that substantial margin. His eight-percentage-point lead with a wider field of candidates comes close.
The results were from a larger poll of swing states on the battleground election, the latest in a series of polls showed Trump’s comeback bid for President is solid shape despite an ongoing criminal trial in New York and three pending cases in other jurisdictions.
Biden does boast support in the Atlanta area, particularly metropolitan DeKalb and Fulton counties. Choosing between just the Republican and Democrat, Biden leads with 56% in those two counties against Trump’s 32%. But Biden and Trump support is split evenly at 41% in Atlanta’s inner suburbs, and Trump leads Biden 56% to 36% in the exurbs.
Outside Greater Atlanta, Trump holds a massive 63%-26% edge in North Georgia, and beats Biden 50% to 37% in South Georgia.
More striking, pollsters’ sample favored Biden. About 39% of those polled supported the Democrat in 2020, when Biden won statewide by fewer than 12,000 votes.
The poll found that while 73% of those who backed Biden in 2020 intend to do so again in 2024, about 6% intend to back Trump and 10% will bolt to Kennedy. About 8% of Biden 2020 voters in the state remain undecided.
Meanwhile, 86% of Trump voters will stick with the Republican, while he loses just 2% support to Biden and 4% to Kennedy. About 5% decline to answer.
