Trump Widens Gap in Georgia: Swing State Poll

Former president Donald Trump has increased his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in the battleground state of Georgia, according to a new poll.
Trump is leading Harris by 6 points in Georgia, with 50 percent support to her 44 percent, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. An additional 3 percent of respondents backed other candidates.
This marks an increase from last month, when the pollster found Trump up 4 points among voters in Georgia.
Trump also holds a slight 2-point lead in the key swing state of North Carolina.
“All eyes are on the South as Georgia and North Carolina, turbocharged by 32 electoral votes between them, can make or break the two candidates in a race that looks to be leaning Trump’s way in Georgia at the moment and churning toward a tight finish in North Carolina,” Quinnipiac’s Tim Malloy said.
The poll conducted between September 25 and 29, surveyed 942 likely voters in Georgia and 953 likely voters in North Carolina. There was a 3.2 percentage point margin of error for both samples.
Trump won both states in 2016 but won only North Carolina in 2020, with President Joe Biden scraping a victory in Georgia.
Georgia and North Carolina are key battleground states that both Democrats and Republicans are fighting tooth and nail for.
Trump has a path to victory in the electoral college if he can swing back Georgia and Arizona, and hold North Carolina. If he were to win Wisconsin too, he would not need the other big prizes of Pennsylvania, Michigan or Nevada.
The new polling comes after Hurricane Helene battered the southeastern United States.
Professor Christopher Carman, Stevenson Professor of Citizenship at the University of Glasgow’s School of Social and Political Sciences, told Newsweek: “The Quinnipiac University Poll has a solid reputation, and we should take their polls seriously. That said, the usual caveats apply that polls are just snapshots in time, so considering the change between their previous polls is important.
“Comparing their current poll to their previous poll in early September, we find that not a great deal has changed. In Georgia, Trump is up one point and Harris is down one point—this variation will be within the poll’s margin of error—which means that we can’t say there has been much of a change. Similarly in North Carolina, the race seems to be fairly static, with an even closer margin between Trump and Harris. Indeed, this poll shows North Carolina is a coin flip in predicting how the state’s vote will go.
“In both states, Trump leads on the important issues of who likely voters think is best suited to handle the economy and immigration. On the other hand, Harris leads in both states on abortion rights—an issue that has gained a great deal of traction since Harris took over as the Democrat’s nominee for the presidency.
“Looking at the average of polls taken across several survey firms, however, we see that whilst Trump is ever so slightly ahead in Georgia, the race would seem to be slightly tighter than it might seem from the Quinnipiac surveys. And we could largely say the same about North Carolina. The polling averages tend to show toss-up races in both states.
“The poll was in the field between 25-29 September, and Hurricane Helene struck these and other southern states on 26 September. That would likely mean that though the poll’s results seem largely consistent with the previous poll, we might still wonder about the extent to which the results could have been influenced by the fact that people were dealing with the hurricane and its horrific aftermath as the survey was being conducted.”
The poll comes after Trump visited Georgia on Monday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, while Harris left the campaign trail to return to Washington for FEMA briefings.
The White House has said Harris will visit affected areas “as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations.”
As the campaign race heats up, both candidates will be out on the trail as they pitch policy to voters across the country.
Trump will return to Wisconsin to bolster support in the Rust Belt. The former president will hold a rally in Waunakee before going to another event in Michigan on Thursday and North Carolina on Friday.
Fresh off the Vice Presidential debate, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, is also heading to crucial swing states this week, visiting Michigan on Wednesday and Georgia on Friday.
Harris is set to campaign in Wisconsin on Wednesday to rally support among Democrats, while her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is set to campaign on a bus tour today through central Pennsylvania.