Harris in ‘more competitive crouch’ in Georgia as election nears

ATLANTA — Kamala Harris put the young, diverse battleground states in the South and West in play. If she wins them, she may have white suburbanites to thank.

As Harris touched down 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 tied. It’s a phenomenon that was unthinkable with the candidacy of President Joe Biden, who had all but ruled the states out as he set his sights instead on the Blue Wall.

But now, three days before Election Day, even some Republicans acknowledge the vice president’s additional paths to victory.

Harris has spent two full days this week amping up supporters across the Sun Belt, including here at the Atlanta Civic Center in downtown Atlanta on Saturday afternoon. She heads next to North Carolina, where she will speak to supporters in Charlotte on Saturday night; and she spent all day Thursday in the West, with rallies in Phoenix, Reno and Las Vegas.

“She definitely is in a more competitive crouch than Biden was,” said Brian Robinson, a GOP strategist in Georgia. “The numbers for Biden in Georgia were atrocious. I mean, there were some, like the New York Times polling back in the summer or spring, it had Trump up more than 10 points — you never see that in Georgia.”

The scene in downtown Georgia Saturday afternoon — Harris, rallying thousands of supporters against the backdrop of the city’s skyline, flanked by signs that said “freedom” — showed just how far Democrats have come in the state.

“Georgia, you know me. I’m not afraid of tough fights — evidently,” she said. “I pledge to you if you give me the chance 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 significantly improved from where Biden was earlier this summer and has helped put these states in play. And while her campaign maintains it is optimistic about these demographics, winning them is still far from certain. Polling, early voting data and uncertainties around changes in vote methods make it hard to tell whether the vice president will be able to match Biden’s 2020 performance, which notched 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 particularly women, could save her.

Harris’ pivot to the center, coupled with an emphasis on abortion rights and threats to democracy, has her doing far better with many of these voters, who have been flocking to the South and West seeking a lower cost of living, than Democrats have in the past.

“The thing that gives me optimism about the Sun Belt is our percentage of college-educated voters, and what you see in states that are rapidly growing, like North Carolina and Georgia, is that it is the in-migration of college-educated voters to places like Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta where we see an explosion of growth — every single day, every single week, every single 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 the majority of voters of color and younger voters — she appears to be. It’s just not clear whether she will win enough of them, 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 final New York Times-Siena College poll released last weekend found Harris several points shy of all of those numbers, at 81 percent with Black voters, 52 percent with Latino voters and 55 percent with voters under 30; a recent ABC-Ipsos poll, meanwhile, found Harris at 90 percent with Black voters, 64 percent with Latino voters and 56 percent with voters under 30.

At the same time, she appears to be overperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers with white, college-educated voters. CNN’s exit poll had Biden at 51 percent for this group, while Harris’ numbers are at 56 percent in the Times-Siena poll.

Democrats have also historically performed better in the Rust Belt states, which they have won every year since 1992 — except when Hillary Clinton failed to hold them in 2016. In that same time period, North Carolina has only voted for a Democrat once, for Barack Obama in 2008; Arizona and Georgia have gone blue twice; and Nevada, which has had the most recent success electing Democratic candidates of the four, has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee all but twice.

Harris’ campaign schedule appears to reflect these electoral realities. While the vice president spent two full days campaigning in the four Sun Belt states, she is spending one full day each in the final stretch of the campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Every single state is within the margin of error. Having said that, I think for Democrats, the truest and strongest path to 270 has been, traditionally, and is for Harris the Blue Wall: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist and a former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton in 2008. “I think you see that reflected in where Harris and Walz have been spending their time and where they're spending their money, but they’re not taking the Sun Belt for granted.”

Campaign aides argue that, in the final days of the campaign, the investment of the vice president’s time in the Sun Belt states shows how serious she is about them — and how close they believe the races are.

“Often at this late stage in a campaign, you are making choices about where you’re moving resources because the states you thought would be in play, or the pathways you thought would be in play aren’t fully there. That is not what we’re facing,” a senior campaign official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the race, told reporters earlier this week. “Every single one of our seven battleground states are absolutely in play.”

In Georgia, Democrats are seeing signs for optimism. Black voters now make up 27 percent of all early votes cast in the state, matching the in-person voting share from 2020, and there was a surge of Black and youth voters in the final days of early voting, with Black voters making up a large share of early voters during the last two days, compared to the same two days in 2020, according to a Democratic strategist, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. 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 in the week, the campaign is seeing signs of hope in the Tar Heel State — in part because Trump has four planned stops there leading up to Election Day. The senior campaign official said that the former president spending so much time in North Carolina suggests “that they’re pretty worried,” adding “that would align with the strength we're seeing in early vote.”

“I think that it's hard to look at these moves from the Trump campaign without feeling like they must be worried and they're seeing what we're seeing there too,” 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 the momentum is on Republicans’ side, particularly with recent GOP gains in voter registration and Republican gains during the early voting period. The official also rebuffed the notion that the campaign is worried about North Carolina, noting that Republicans continue to lead in early voting there.

Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokesperson, argued that Trump is “surging and continuing to build momentum heading into Election Day.”

“But we are not taking anything for granted and will be making multiple visits to battleground states in the final days of the campaign because nothing short of the future of our nation is at stake,” she said.

The Harris campaign official also added that their internal data suggests that they have increased their support in the last couple of weeks of the campaign among Black voters, including Black men, and young Latino voters. And Democrats broadly are optimistic, based on what they’re seeing in polling and early voting data, that many voters of color and younger people have yet to turn out. For instance, a recent Marist Poll out of North Carolina found that 38 percent of Black voters said they intend to vote on Election Day, compared to 26 percent of white voters.

“That's a big shift from 2020,” said Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and a senior adviser at the data firm TargetSmart, on a briefing call. “And so when you look at that, you can just do some simple math based on the early vote that has been cast already in North Carolina … it actually projects Black voters increasing their share of the electorate over 2020, narrowly, but still an increase.”

Out West, the campaign still has significant hurdles with its younger and heavily Latino electorate. The Democratic strategist noted that youth voters have increased their vote share every day since last Friday, and that returns for those voters are increasing in Arizona, while Latino turnout in Arizona has increased over the last week.

But strategists on both sides of the aisle say they have no idea what’s going to happen in Nevada — where a massive number of independent voters is complicating projections — while in Arizona, the state is looking slightly more favorable for Trump. Harris could, however, notch a victory in Arizona if she’s winning over John McCain-type Republicans and independent voters in the state, and strategists say they wouldn’t be surprised if the contest went either way.

“My instinct is they have more faith in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and maybe even Georgia, or North Carolina, than they do out here,” said Chuck Coughlin, a longtime GOP strategist in Arizona who left the party under Trump. “It's remarkable what Harris has done in the three months that she's had this reign. She's really positioned herself actually as a competitive candidate, where she's a credible candidate.”