A stack of stickers sits atop a ballot scanner during the November 8, 2022 midterm elections in Tucker, Georgia. In 2024, Georgia is poised to play a central role in the outcome of the presidential election.
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Just under 12,000 votes separated Joe Biden and Donald Trump when they last appeared on the ballot in Georgia. Four years later, the rivals are preparing to share a debate this week in Atlanta as they fight for the slice of Georgia voters who could swing the presidential election.
Some of these voters with outsized influence live in Alpharetta, an Atlanta suburb where new subdivisions keep popping up and have helped turn this former Republican stronghold purple. Reading a novel on a lounge chair in the sun at Alpharetta’s Wills Park pool, Kerry Webster is the kind of voter Biden and Trump need to win over.
Webster says she is unhappy with her choices for president. And although she voted for Trump in 2020, he has since been convicted on 34 counts and faces other charges, including in Georgia.
A grand jury indicted Trump just miles from the debate stage for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
“He’s an accomplice. He’s not really a good person, he’s really not,” Webster said. “But the economy was better, and Biden, I don’t know if he’s doing much for us, I hate to say it.”
But Webster has no plans to watch Thursday’s debate. Although she lives in a state and a suburban community that helped decide the presidency in 2020, she says she doesn’t feel motivated about her options and wonders if her vote matters anyway.
The Wills Park pool in Alpharetta, Georgia, gave families a break from the heat, but with the presidential debate in Georgia on Thursday, voters can’t get a break from politics in the crucial state.
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Prasad and Mansi Vicare watch over their kids splashing nearby while a DJ bumps into Taylor Swift repeatedly and older kids jump off a high diving board to win prizes. The Vichares identify themselves as political independents. And while they certainly plan to vote, they think debates are a mostly pointless exercise.
“To be honest, it’s a waste, but that’s just my opinion,” Prasad said. “I’m indifferent,” added Mansi, who believes candidates are just telling people what they think they want to hear. “I feel like it’s a bit wrong, so I don’t know if it’s really helpful.”
A few deck chairs away, Madalyn Ford worries that some voters have not internalized the issues.
Ford says she has voted for both Republicans and Democrats, but never for Trump. At 73, she worries about the United States her grandchildren will inherit and says she won’t miss the debate.
“This is really important for Biden,” Ford predicted. “He’d better get a good night’s sleep. I don’t think he has dementia, but he’s old and that’s extremely important.”
Polls suggest Biden has gained ground among older voters, particularly women. But support from young voters of color, who have long been Democrats’ bread and butter, appears to be weakening.
Millennial Deanna McKay says she struggles to know if her vote counts. McKay voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. She says she will watch this debate with an open mind.
“Socially Biden, but financially Trump, and that’s a pretty tough place to be,” she explained. “But it’s a little frustrating because they’re not the two candidates I would choose.”
McKay says she cares most about affordable housing and reproductive rights. She says she doesn’t directly blame Trump for the overthrow of Roe v. Wadedespite his three appointments which consolidated a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Field operations take shape as the vote approaches
This month, the Trump campaign opened its first field office in Georgia in a brick building 20 miles south of Atlanta shared with an insurance agency. On a recent weekday, staffers invited supporters to visit the campaign’s first field office, grab coffee and donuts, and sign up to volunteer.
Ben Carson, who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Donald Trump administration, speaks during an opening ceremony for the Republican presidential candidate’s first campaign office in Georgia, in Fayetteville, on June 13.
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Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump, traveled to Georgia for the official inauguration and described by analogy the choice voters will face in November.
“Would you prefer the surgeon who has bad bedside manner but saves everyone, or the one with a very gentle personality who kills everyone? » asked Carson. “Which one would you take?”
The Trump campaign says it now has more than a dozen staffed field offices in the state, although Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, recently raised concerns that the The Trump campaign’s field game in Georgia could be lagging behind.
“This year, it will be clearer than ever that Georgians are ready to help send their state’s sixteen electoral votes to the GOP column this fall,” said Henry Scavone, communications director for the Republican National Committee in Georgia, in a press release.
After Biden successfully flipped Georgia blue in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992, Republicans swept nearly every statewide office in the mid-term elections. mandate that followed. Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock was re-elected that year in a runoff, the only exception.
Democrats still believe Georgia is winnable and view a strong field game as crucial to achieving more victories. Ahead of the debate, the Biden campaign says it will hold 200 events in Georgia, seeking to capitalize on the national attention and side-by-side vision of the two candidates.
Jonae Wartel, senior adviser to the Biden campaign in Georgia, says building a presence across the state, not just the Democratic stronghold of metro Atlanta, is a key part of the campaign strategy from the Georgia countryside. The campaign says it has 14 field offices in Georgia and will reach 100 employees here by the end of the week.
“Here in our backyard, the world will watch as President Biden is adept at leading us into a new four-year administration and Donald Trump continues to be a threat,” Wartel said. “That contrast is going to be on full display. It’s the campaign’s job to take advantage of it.”
“I’m very nervous, I’ll be honest”
The Biden campaign opened a campaign office in Atlanta with a Juneteenth block party joined by Vice President Harris.
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Vice President Harris has visited Georgia so often that she says people started jokingly asking her if she was going to move there.
“I said maybe!” she recently joked at a Juneteenth block party to celebrate the opening of a coordinated campaign office in Atlanta.
“We will never let anyone take our power from us – we will never let anyone silence us. That’s what this election is about,” Harris told crowd members as they enjoyed barbecue and snow cones . “The people of Georgia are going to make the decision, and the decision will take another four years.”
Val Acree attends a Juneteenth block party with Vice President Harris and says she’s excited to vote for Harris and President Biden again in 2024.
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Voter Val Acree said she unapologetically supports Biden and Harris. Despite this, she has some apprehension for the coming months.
“I’m very nervous, I’ll be honest,” Acree said. “There’s a lot of misinformation and disengagement, so I’m doing everything I can to engage people.”
That’s why Acree says she’ll be watching for when Biden and Trump meet on the debate stage, just a few miles away.
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