Joe Biden could be on his way to winning Georgia again following a surprising — and narrow — victory there in the 2020 presidential race against Donald Trump.
New polling conducted by a firm called Public Opinion Strategies that was the subject of reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed Biden one percentage point ahead of Trump in a measurement of prospective voters’ opinions in that hypothetical general election match-up. Biden had 44 percent of the support, while Trump had 43 percent.
While that lead for Biden obviously is close, it’s close to the margin by which Biden actually won Georgia in the 2020 race, suggesting there could be a repeat scenario. Biden’s winning margin was under one-quarter of a percentage point, buoyed by ballots counted later in the process of tabulation. There is also a clear precedent for Democratic victories in statewide elections held in Georgia, considering Raphael Warnock’s win in a Senate race just last year. That outcome followed other Democratic wins in Georgia’s U.S. Senate contests not long prior.
The same new polling with the slight lead for Biden over Trump also found Ron DeSantis leading Biden in a potential match-up in the 2024 election, but it seems unlikely the Florida governor would make it out of the Republican presidential primary if he follows through with joining the candidate field.
Although speculation around a DeSantis run for office has been what is now longstanding, Trump has been racking up endorsements from institutional leaders in the GOP, like members of Congress and the current chairman of the official party organization known as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which participates in campaigning. DeSantis, though making a slight showing of support, also remains way behind Trump in surveys of voters’ Republican primary opinions. A recent trip DeSantis took overseas didn’t exactly boost his profile either, with reports in the European version of POLITICO saying U.K. business leaders were thoroughly unimpressed with the governor.
Biden is unlikely to have any serious challenge for the Democratic Party’s 2024 nomination. Self-help icon Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have announced campaigns but lose by a lot in surveys.
