Battleground America: How the Black vote in Georgia could shape the US election
Georgia is on a knife edge and winning the Black vote could tip it either way, ITV News Correspondent Dan Rivers reports
ITV News' Battleground America series will focus on the people, places and policies that will pick the next president in the 2024 election.
Of all the swing states which will decide this election, Georgia promises to be one of the closest battles.
In 2020, Donald Trump famously lost by only 11,779 votes - that was just 0.24% of the total votes cast in the state. It promises to be incredibly close again in just under two months.
Democrat support is concentrated in the urban centres like Atlanta, while the Republican base is in Georgia’s vast rural hinterland.
The election will likely be decided in the suburbs, where the Black vote could be critical.
Historically, African Americans have voted Democrat, but over the last few years Trump has clawed back a small but potentially significant share of their support.
While out filming with a Republican team trying to rally the vote on the doorstep, we found how they are trying to target undecided voters in those communities using electronic databases of the persuadable.
Jameel was one such voter, greeting the Republican canvasser cautiously, but when "supporting the military" and "helping working families" was mentioned, he warmed to the impromptu pitch.
In the end, he told me he was yet to make up his mind when it came to putting Trump back in the White House.
It may be surprising that Black voters haven’t been turned off by Trump’s racist tone, but voters like Jameel are socially conservative and appear to be willing to tune out parts of Trump’s character while focusing on his "low tax, low immigration, anti-woke" agenda.
The numbers bear this out.
In 2016, Trump secured 8% of the Black vote, when he lost to Biden in 2020, that rose to 11% in Georgia. This time he might be on course to improve on that number.
If he does, it might win him the election. The issue that repeatedly comes up among those we spoke to is inflation.
Wilnesha Warnell works in medical care in Hamilton, a tiny rural community in Georgia's Harris County.
The county may bear Kamala’s last name but there is little support for her here.
You might think Wilnesha, a Black woman, would be excited by the prospect of America’s first Black female president, but she told me she is so disengaged and disillusioned that she might not even bother voting.
The reason? Inflation has eroded her purchasing power and she feels Kamala Harris, as vice president, bears some responsibility for her financial pain.
These are the hard truths the Democrats must overcome to win over voters like Wilnesha.
The recent euphoria around Harris, after her commanding performance at the Democratic National Convention is fading fast.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters shows Harris trailing Trump nationally by one percentage point.
That puts the race in the margin of error. It’s a coin-toss election right now. In Georgia, the battle may come down to a few thousand undecided voters - like Jameel and Wilnesha.
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