ATLANTA — Joe Biden y Donald Trump they coincide this Saturday in Georgia, a state in the southern United States that the Democratic president won by a narrow margin in 2020 and that could be decisive again in this year’s elections.
Now that their respective parties’ primary victories almost certainly lead to a rematch, the contenders will hold campaign events in a state they both consider crucial to their victory in November.
Biden decided to go to the city of Atlanta to mobilize the African-American and Hispanic electorate.
“The stakes in these elections could not be higher” for these voters, declared his campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, in a press release, claiming to have received the support of three “political action committees” related to those two communities.
The most expensive presidential campaign
“Political action committees” are investment funds linked to a candidate, party or broader cause, which intervene in all US elections.
His role is crucial in the current presidential campaign, announced as the most expensive in the country’s history.
The Biden campaign just announced that it will spend $30 million on television ads. The first of them began filming on Saturday on national channels and in states that promise to be highly contested: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
Trump, harassed by justice
Donald Trump, who barring any surprises will be the Republican Party candidate against Biden in November, will address his followers at 10:00 p.m. GMT in Georgia.
Harassed by justice, the 77-year-old tycoon is accused, among other things, of trying to reverse the results of the 2020 elections in Georgia in his favor.
The American electoral system works in such a way that what counts is not the majority of votes at the national level, but in each state.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in most of the swing states, those that usually swing between Democrats and Republicans in each election. Among them are Georgia, but also Michigan and Wisconsin, where she will go next week. In Georgia the final advantage in favor of Biden was just under 12,000 votes.
Biden numbers on the ground
In Georgia, once a Republican stronghold, the gap has narrowed to such a point that they can’t even agree on how to describe the current situation. “A 52-48 state,” says Governor Brian Kemp, whose party controls the state executive. “We are not blue (Democrats), we are not red (Republicans),” Williams responds, “but purple,” a definition that is supported by the victory of Biden in 2020 and of the two Democratic senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who Georgia sent to Washington.
In any case, they agree that both Biden and Trump have a path to victory, but one riddled with obstacles.
“Biden’s numbers are off the charts for many good reasons, and we can talk about it. That’s why, without a doubt, Trump can win the race,” Kemp said at a recent forum sponsored by the online political newspaper Punchbowl News. “I also think he can lose. “I think it’s going to be a lot harder than people think.”
Biden won by a quarter of a percentage point in 2020. Warnock won his Senate seat by three points in 2022. Kemp won the governorship in 2018 by 1.5 points, but widened his re-election margin in 2022 to 7.5 points, a spectacular gap in such a hotly contested state.
For the November election, polls have Trump first in most of these key states.
Source: With information from AFP and AP
