Trump stretches Georgia lead as voters firm up choices — though many black voters remain undecided

Peach State voters are making up their minds, and a new poll suggests they might be coming back home to Donald Trump, bringing 16 electoral votes into his column — with a higher-than-average number of black voters still undecided.

The Republican won the state in 2016 before losing by the narrowest of margins in 2020.

The survey the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released Wednesday morning (conducted by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs) shows the former president ahead of Kamala Harris 47% to 44%, with 7% of respondents undecided.

The lead is just within the +/- 3.1% margin of error. And if these  numbers hold, the spectacle of a defeated Trump in 2020 “trying to “find” votes after the election won’t recur this November.

While Georgia polls (and surveys everywhere else) have shown some volatility during this campaign cycle, the AJC survey may bear more significance given that voters’ minds are more or less made up. The data show fewer than 3% of voters who are committed to a candidate expect to potentially choose differently.

Harris did improve on the Democratic position in a previous AJC poll. Trump led Biden 51% to 46% back in June, when the president was still the candidate, and during a ballot test between him and Harris, he led by the same amount.

Part of the veep’s problem is she’s still underperforming with important subgroups.

She has only 86% support inside her own party and 77% support among black voters, a group she has made an aggressive play for, including with an Atlanta rally in July featuring rapper Megan Thee Stallion, in which the musician delivered X-rated rhymes and Harris claimed the “momentum is shifting” in the race.

Notably, 12% of black voters are undecided, suggesting Trump’s attempts to appeal to that cohort may be paying off as the campaign enters the final stretch.

In the wake of the much-publicized rapprochement between Trump and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, the former president appears to be consolidating his base. More than 90% of GOP registrants support Trump, who also has supermajority support among white voters and a majority of senior citizens.

But there are positives here for Harris too, including the perception even among some Trump supporters that she’ll win.

A plurality of poll respondents (48%) predict a Democratic victory, and that number includes 14% of Republicans 8% of  Democrats believe Trump will prevail.

The RealClearPolitics average shows a much closer race, with Trump up by 0.2%, though that metric doesn’t include this fresh AJC poll.