Trump or Biden? Meh. Economic worries and political weariness in Atlanta’s bellwether precinct give a taste of 2024
If the presidential election were held today, Donald Trump would win Georgia, according to an exclusive DailyMail.com poll. Just don’t tell Pam and Patricia.
“There’s no way I’m voting for him again,” said Pam, 64, who worked as an accountant before retiring.
“Republicans really need to come up with someone better.”
The two friends treated themselves to a rare breakfast at J. Christopher’s Diner in Brookhaven on the outskirts of Atlanta.
This is a rich area. The main street, located just 20 minutes from the city center, is lined with chic restaurants and barr studios.
Candidates who win this corner of Brookhaven, Georgia, could win the entire state. The Ashford Park constituency voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and narrowly for Joe Biden in 2020.
Former President Donald Trump leads Georgia President Joe Biden by three points, according to a new poll conducted by JL Partners for DailyMail.com.
Smart low-rise apartment buildings give way to double-garage family homes where autumn leaves are raked into neat piles.
It is mostly conservative and mostly white. How he votes next year could go a long way toward deciding how this once deep-red state, which voted for Trump in 2016 and then flipped to Joe Biden, distributes its 16 Electoral College votes.
Voting for Biden this time was simply not an option for Pam.
“I can’t stand him, what he’s done to our country and the economy,” she said, before Patricia, 62, chimed in as a teletherapist: “And his age.”
They fall into the category of “dual disapprovers” – a group of voters who are unimpressed by the idea of being faced with the same choices they faced in 2020.
How they go next year could make all the difference in battlegrounds like Georgia.
Biden won by a razor-thin margin in 2020. He received 11,000 more votes than Trump, or about 0.2 percent of turnout.
It underscored that Georgia is not the deep red state of decades past. Atlanta’s rapid growth has shifted the balance to such an extent that last year Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock both won re-election against Trump-backed challengers.
As a result, Georgia will be one of the most closely contested states in next year’s presidential elections.
In Georgia, Biden lost 11 points, with some saying they didn’t know how they would vote.
JL Partners surveyed 550 voters in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. The results show Joe Biden is at risk of losing two states that helped him win in 2020.
However, voters seem tired.
Trump has a three-point lead in the state, according to a DailyMail.com poll released Monday, but that’s largely because he lost fewer supporters in 2020 than Biden.
So while Biden and Trump tied for about 47 percent of the vote last time, our poll showed the president down 11 points and the former president down eight points.
This corner of Brookhaven, located in the area of Ashford Park Elementary School, may provide a better idea of what’s to come in the next year.
“If we can get Republicans to win with voters right here, then we can win Georgia,” said Republican political operative Brian Robinson.
The Ashford Park Elementary School site is located in the western corner of Dekalb County, which is populated primarily by Democratic voters.
However, this precinct narrowly supported Trump in 2016, with 809 votes compared to 782 for Hillary Clinton.
That changed in 2020, when 1,075 people chose Biden over 890 who voted for Trump.
Trump is still the answer for businesswoman Cindy Lights, owner of the fashion store Marguerite’s in Dresden.
Cindy Lights owns Marguerite’s in Dresden, a lifestyle and design store. She said Donald Trump is still the best choice for the business community, which wants someone to fix the economy.
“It takes someone angry and tough to stand up and change things,” she said.
2022 was a good year for her store as people went broke after the pandemic. But the deteriorating economic situation
“This year hasn’t been that good,” she said. “This is a rich area, and even the people here feel it.”
The economy could be the number one factor in determining how the region and Georgia as a whole will vote, Robinson said.
“If in 12 months people feel the same way they do now about the economy… worries about inflation, they feel disadvantaged when they go to the grocery store… that’s really bad news for Joe Biden,” he said. He said.
The only thing that won’t change, he added, is that the Democrats have a candidate in their eighties.
“Georgians are concerned about his age and cognitive abilities,” he said. “And the Democrats are saying the same thing as the Republicans.”
In any case, it will be cramped. For Republicans, a victory means a victory over those Kemp-Warnock voters who liked the governor’s conservative positions and how he opened the state early during COVID but were put off by Trump’s claims of election fraud.
And for Democrats, it’s all about passion and mobilizing the state’s black votes.
“It’s offline now,” he said. “And if the Democrats run the election based on Biden’s record, I’m not sure they’ll understand that.”