What is Trump Doing in Georgia?
August 18, 2024
The Trump campaign’s recent massive spending in Georgia is indeed related to his bizarre feud with Gov. Brian Kemp (R), but not in the way some of us thought. The campaign recognizes that Georgia is a must-win state for Trump; there is no plausible path to victory without it. While many think Pennsylvania serves the same purpose for Harris, if she can win Georgia she does have another path to victory. This makes Georgia even more important for Trump.
One thing a lot of pundits do is play with the electoral map to figure out different routes to victory for candidates. I recently saw one person on social media exclaim that all Trump has to do to win the election is win Georgia and Pennsylvania. While mathematically true, that’s not how elections work. It is entirely unlikely that Pennsylvania will vote for Trump, but Michigan and Wisconsin will go for Harris. It is also unlikely that Georgia will go for Harris, but Arizona and Nevada will go for Trump. Those things can happen; don’t get me wrong. But if they were going to, we would see some indication in the polling that something different was happening in Pennsylvania than in the other Blue Wall states. They are all so politically and culturally similar, that the only reasonable expectation at this point is that if they vote differently it will only be by the slightest of margins. Again, that can happen. It just usually does not. We saw that in 2016 and 2020. The margins in the Blue Wall states those years were tiny, yet they all voted the same way for president. Does this mean that Trump can just focus on the Blue Wall states and win the same way he did in 2016? No. He still needs Georgia. Harris does not.
Recently, the Trump campaign has made a $28 million ad buy in the Peach State. This far above what they are spending in other battleground states this month - about ten times as much as in Pennsylvania. In addition, MAGA, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, is putting tens of millions of dollars into Georgia in its own ad buy. The amounts are far above what they are doing in other states,1 so many - including me - wondered what was going on.2
The party-line answer is that “if Trump wins Georgia, he wins the election.” That’s not entirely true, of course, but as we have already discussed he cannot win without it. Some, including me, wondered if Trump was planning to use his ad space to attack Kemp. Others wondered if there was some grift going on. The most reasonable answer at the time seemed to be that it was just a quirk of how and when the money was being spent so that it looked like Georgia was being spent much higher than other states when over time it was not really that much more. That last answer does have some truth to it,3 but Georgia is getting more attention for another reason: Trump has alienated Kemp so much, Kemp won’t help him win this year.
I am no medical professional, but it seems obvious that something about Trump is broken and his brain does not work like most people’s do. He really seems to believe that everyone owes him absolute loyalty even where he treats them like absolute dogshit. We have seen this pattern repeat time and again in the past eight years with him. Since 2020, Trump has been attacking Kemp for not corruptly “finding” votes for him to win the state after Biden beat him by just under 12,000 votes. Trump is under indictment in that state for multiple felonies related to his attempts to interfere in the election results there. Trump’s attacks on Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), and the integrity of the election process in Georgia likely suppressed Republican turnout enough to send two Democrats to the US Senate in the runoff elections the day before he attempted to overthrow the Republic on January 6, 2021.
Trump has kept on insulting and attacking Kemp since then. It had become a real concern for the campaign. Kemp is a proven vote-getter in Georgia, and knows how to appeal to Republicans and independents. From what I have heard from some Georgia residents, he’s fairly well-liked in general. And he controls a very strong field operation in the state. It is this field operation that the Trump campaign wants - likely needs - to help it win there in November.
Kemp has not attended Trump campaign events and fundraisers over the past year. According to Politico, Trump has been seething about this and decided to “unload” on Kemp at a rally earlier this month in Atlanta. Per his usual whine, Trump claimed that he was the reason behind Kemp’s success, that Kemp was treating him very unfairly, and then he insulted him by calling him “a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor.” And, of course, Trump repeated his usual juvenile tactic of name-calling by referring to the governor as “Little Brian Kemp.” If the governor’s field operation refuses to help campaign and Harris wins the state, Trump will probably have this moment to blame.
According to Politico:
The eruption unnerved Trump’s Republican allies — and marked a potential turning point in his presidential campaign in a key state. Kemp not only controls a vaunted turnout operation in Georgia but also has a track record of assembling the kind of coalition of traditionalist Republicans and independents that Trump will be counting on to carry the swing state in November.
Following the rally, even Trump’s advisers seemed to know the former president had gone too far. “The Trump campaign was calling around to legislators … asking them to post positive things about the rally on social media and were being told, ‘No,’” said a Georgia GOP operative familiar with these private conversations and granted anonymity to discuss them.
“I think what it does is it puts more pressure on the Trump organization in the state when you’re essentially operating without any help from the incumbent governor,” said another Georgia GOP operative granted anonymity to speak freely. “And so the Trump team’s going to have a lot of pressure in Georgia to get it right.”
. . .
“I think it’s less about the infrastructure [Trump] has. And it’s just more about the activist class — that is the segment of the activist class that is loyal to the governor — it’s completely going to either sit it out or actively hope the president loses,” said the second Georgia GOP operative.
By convincing just a few thousand Republican votes at home in January 2021, Trump cost the Republicans the Senate. It is unlikely his campaign can replicate Kemp’s field operation, so there is a real chance that Trump won’t be able to get out the same vote he would if he had the governor’s cooperation. Harris might win the state anyway, but if Kemp’s people sit on their hands and a few thousand less Republican voters show up Trump could lose the state when by playing nice he could have won.
Georgia Polling
By the time Biden withdrew from the race, Georgia appeared lost. Trump would not have to worry about the state, and could move onto fighting Biden in the Blue Wall states. However, since Harris entered the race, the polling in Georgia has narrowed. The most recent polling - both from top quality pollsters - has it even (Benenson Strategy Group) and Trump +4 (Siena) in the two-way race. (With Kennedy in, Trump’s lead drops to +3 in Siena’s poll, but remains even in BSG.) It is worth noting that Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio (who is no dummy, I assure you), released a poll for AARP at the end of July showing the race in Georgia even at 48% in the two-way race and Harris +2 in the multiparty race.
The New York Times polling average for Georgia is Trump +3. It was Trump +8 a month ago. The 538 average is Trump +1. The Economist has Trump up by less than one point. Silver Bulletin (which is Nate Silver’s new outfit) has the state at Trump +1.5. In each of these models, the gap between Trump and Harris has narrowed significantly (although less so with 538) since Biden withdrew.
Across all battleground states, we are seeing the polling trending not only towards Harris, but towards Democratic Senate candidates as well. There is no Senate race in Georgia this year, but the only Democratic seats that appear to remain at risk are those of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). And even in these races, the latest polling has both ahead (although Tester’s lead is new). Trump may not stay in the lead in Georgia for much longer. In any case, he cannot afford to assume he will win. The state should once again be close, but if Trump cannot win there it’s hard to see how he can win the election.
MAGA, Inc.’s recent buys are heavy on Pennsylvania. This is further evidence that some of the uneven spending is not just a result of timing but different funding sources spending money. PACs are not supposed to coordinate with campaigns, but it sure seems like this one is since they are taking care of Pennsylvania while the campaign takes care of Georgia.
There has been a flurry of ad buys since the massive Georgia spend was announced. You can follow the news on this front at AdImpact Politics.
See Footnote 1.