ATLANTA – Kamala Harris put the young, diverse battleground states in the South and West into play. If she wins, she may have it thanks to the white residents of the suburbs.
As Harris landed in Atlanta on Saturday, the race in these four swing states – Georgia and North Carolina in the South, and Arizona and Nevada in the West – remains essentially the same. It’s a phenomenon that was unthinkable with the candidacy of President Joe Biden, who all but ruled out the states as he set his sights on the Blue Wall.
But now, three days before Election Day, even some Republicans are recognizing the vice president’s additional paths to victory.
Harris spent two full days this week rallying supporters across the Sun Belt, including here on Saturday afternoon at the Atlanta Civic Center in downtown Atlanta. She’s heading to North Carolina, where she will speak to supporters in Charlotte on Saturday evening; and on Thursday she spent all day out West, with rallies in Phoenix, Reno and Las Vegas.
“She is definitely in a more competitive position than Biden,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist in Georgia. “The numbers for Biden in Georgia were horrible. I mean, there were a few, like the New York Times poll in the summer or spring, where Trump was up more than 10 points — you never see that in Georgia.”
The scene in central Georgia Saturday afternoon — Harris rallying thousands of supporters against the backdrop of the city skyline, flanked by signs reading “freedom” — showed just how far Democrats have come in the state.
“Georgia, you know me. I’m not afraid of hard fights – apparently,” she said. “I promise you that if you give me the opportunity to fight on your behalf as president, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way.”
Harris’ standing with younger voters and voters of color has improved significantly compared to Biden’s earlier this summer, and has helped bring these states into play. And while her campaign claims to be optimistic about these demographics, winning them is still far from certain. Opinion polls, early voting data and uncertainties surrounding changes in voting methods make it difficult to say whether the vice president will be able to match Biden’s 2020 performance, which gave him victories in three of these states.
But if she can’t, strategists on both sides of the aisle here in the Sun Belt say white, college-educated suburbanites, and especially women, could save her.
Harris’s turn to the center, coupled with an emphasis on abortion rights and threats to democracy, means she fares much better with many of these voters, who have flocked to the South and West in search of a lower cost of living. than Democrats have done in the past. the past.
“What makes me optimistic about the Sun Belt is our percentage of college-educated voters, and what you’re seeing in states that are growing rapidly like North Carolina and Georgia is that it’s the immigration of college-educated voters. to places like Raleigh, Charlotte and Atlanta, where we are seeing an explosion of growth – every day, every week, every year,” said Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina. “It’s all about college-educated voters — college-educated white voters.”
It’s not that Harris isn’t winning over the majority of voters of color and younger voters — it appears she is. It’s just not clear whether she will win enough, with polls all over the map. According to CNN’s 2020 exit poll, Biden won 87 percent of black voters, 65 percent of Latino voters and 60 percent of voters under 30. The latest New York Times-Siena College poll released last weekend showed Harris trailing all those numbers by several points. , at 81 percent among black voters, 52 percent among Latino voters and 55 percent among voters under 30; a recent ABC-Ipsos poll found Harris with 90 percent among black voters, 64 percent among Latino voters and 56 percent among voters under 30.
At the same time, she appears to be outperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers among white, college-educated voters. In CNN’s exit poll, Biden was at 51 percent for this group, while Harris’ numbers in the Times-Siena poll are at 56 percent.
Democrats have also historically performed better in Rust Belt states, which they have won every year since 1992 — except when Hillary Clinton failed to hold them in 2016. During that same period, North Carolina has voted for a Democrat only once, for Barack. Obama in 2008; Arizona and Georgia have gone blue twice; and Nevada, which has had the most recent success in electing Democratic candidates of the four, has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in all but two.
Harris’ campaign schedule appears to reflect this electoral reality. While the vice president spent two full days campaigning in the four Sun Belt states, she is spending a full day each in the final stretch of the campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Every state is within the margin of error. That said, I think for Democrats the truest and strongest path to 270 has traditionally been and is the Blue Wall for Harris: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist and former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton in 2008. “I think you see that reflected in where Harris and Walz have spent their time and where they spend their money, but they don’t take the Sun Belt for granted.”
Campaign aides argue that the vice president’s investment of time in the Sun Belt states in the final days of the campaign shows how serious she is about them — and how close they believe the races are.
“Often at this late stage in a campaign you’re making choices about where to move resources because the states you thought would be in play, or the paths you thought would be in play, aren’t fully there are. That is not what we are dealing with,” a senior campaign official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the race, told reporters earlier this week. “Each of our seven battlegrounds is absolutely in play.”
In Georgia, Democrats see signs of optimism. Black voters now make up 27 percent of all early votes cast in the state, matching 2020’s in-person vote share, and there was a surge of Black and youth voters in the final days of early voting, with Black voters making up a large majority formed. The last two days saw a large share of early voters, compared to the same two days in 2020, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, according to a Democratic strategist. And Thursday was the biggest day of the early voting period for voters under 30, the strategist added.
And despite reports of lagging black turnout in North Carolina earlier this week, the campaign sees signs of hope in the Tar Heel State — in part because Trump has four planned stops there in the run-up to Election Day. The senior campaign official said the former president spending so much time in North Carolina suggests “they are quite concerned,” adding “that would align with the strength we’re seeing in early voting.”
“I think it’s hard to look at these moves from the Trump campaign without feeling like they should be concerned and that they’re seeing what we’re seeing there,” the official said.
A Trump campaign official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race, said Democrats’ optimism about the Sun Belt is “bizarre” and argued that momentum is on Republicans’ side, especially with the Republican Party’s recent gains in voter registration and Republican gains. during the early voting period. The official also dismissed the idea that the campaign is concerned about North Carolina, noting that Republicans are still ahead in early voting there.
Danielle Alvarez, spokesperson for the Trump campaign, argued that Trump is “rising and continuing to build momentum leading up to Election Day.”
“But we are taking nothing for granted and will make multiple visits to battleground states in the final days of the campaign because nothing less than the future of our nation is at stake,” she said.
Harris’ campaign official also added that their internal data indicates they have increased their support among Black voters, including Black men, and young Latino voters in the last few weeks of the campaign. And Democrats are generally optimistic, based on what they see in polls and early voting data, that many voters of color and younger people have yet to pick out. For example, a recent Marist poll from North Carolina found that 38 percent of black voters said they planned to vote on Election Day, compared to 26 percent of white voters.
“That’s a big change from 2020,” Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser at the data firm TargetSmart, said during a briefing call. “And so when you look at that, you can just do some simple math based on the early voting that’s already been cast in North Carolina… it’s actually projecting that Black voters will increase their share of the electorate in 2020, scary, but still an increase. .”
In the West, the campaign still faces significant hurdles with the younger and heavily Latino electorate. The Democratic strategist noted that youth voters have increased their vote share every day since last Friday, and returns for those Arizona voters are increasing, while Latino turnout in Arizona has increased over the past week.
But strategists on both sides of the aisle say they have no idea what will happen in Nevada — where a huge number of independent voters complicate the forecasts — while the state looks slightly more favorable to Trump in Arizona. However, Harris could pull off a victory in Arizona if she wins over the state’s John McCain-type Republicans and independent voters, and strategists say they wouldn’t be surprised if the battle goes both ways.
“My instinct is that they have more confidence in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and maybe even Georgia or North Carolina, than here,” said Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Republican strategist in Arizona who left the party under Trump. “It is remarkable what Harris has done in her three months in office. She has really positioned herself as a competitive candidate, where she is a credible candidate.”
