I have to admit, the idea of them being tied in GA really doesn’t seem right. There are Trump flags and yard signs everywhere around here. I know there are a lot of people in Atlanta, but I do struggle to see it being enough to make a poll like this seem to be tied. It’s like this all across the northern third of the state (that’s basically anywhere I ever go) and I hate it so much.
Trump flags and rallies are not necessarily evidence of widespread support. It’s not like there was a bunch of Biden flags on yards in say California, even before the 2020 election. Maybe it will happen with Harris because she seems to be quite popular, but I suspect Democrat supporters just aren’t weird enough to do that en masse.
Remember, Biden not only won GA in 2020 but also won 2 run-off elections to get both US Senate seats—one in 2021, and the other in 2022/23. With all due respect, Trump flags / yard signs are not statistically representative to the mind-boggling number of those who reside in the city.
Put another way: If Democratic voters turn out in GA, then they simply win. Canvass, phone-bank, donate, get friends/family to register and help get them to the polls.
(Edit: Though I will say your point proves the power of yard-signs and bumper-stickers — for they raise enthusiasm for your side and sow concern if not defeatism for the other side, projecting popularity broader than reality.)
In my experience libs and lefties are less likely to buy yard signs overall, and remember they changed their candidate: had to take down the Biden/Harris sign and order a new Harris/walz one. So signs aren’t a great indicator. Also metro-Atlanta and Athens alone have about the same population as the entire rest of the state combined.
But, the republicans are so loud that it certainly seems like the whole state is ultra right wing.
I’m still a little surprised that after Trump tried to subvert the election results in GA in 2020 that anybody would be willing to still vote for him in that state. I can’t imagine many Biden voters having forgotten that particular incident. My hope is that they’ve held onto that anger silently and plan to turn out in November.
Another commenter made a very good point - Trump signs in MAGA country are safe. Biden or Harris signs in MAGA country are like asking for trouble. The conservative crowd is far more likely to commit acts of political violence, and virtually all of the south is a safe haven for Trumpism and conservative extremism. I can’t blame anybody for not wanting to do yard signs. Especially since a lot of people find yard signs to be obnoxious no matter who you support.
60 percent of Georgia’s population live in the Atlanta metro.
Take a look at this map from the 2020 election and you see why it’s tight in GA:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html
The Atlanta metro is MASSIVE. I am technically in it. Atlanta Metro != Atlanta. If you drive through the metro Atlanta area, you’re going to see things like permanent Trump signs made out of wood and concrete. Yes, I’m aware that not everyone around me is a MAGAt, however I should film me driving from where I am (about 45 mins north of Atlanta) to Atlanta, back again, and then north. It is everywhere, including entire suburbs. All of this insanity is caused by religious stupidity which stemmed from Jerry Falwell standing to lose money from desegregation. There are hundreds of thousands of evangelicals that have been duped into believing that if a liberal has ever said anything, you’d go to Hell for agreeing. No, this is not hyperbole.
I lost my father recently. He was actually an incredibly intelligent man. He designed the microwave communications systems on the Hubble. Why am I mentioning this? He was actually intelligent and made a career from science based observations (he would often remind me that things are really hard to measure), but religion forced him to be stupid. That’s the serious power of religion - even if you have observed different mechanics on a scientific level you will do everything you can to mentally disprove such a theory if it might mean that you’ll go to Hell.
I still miss him. He taught me machining, and the material science problems that go with it (alongside trigonometry). What I don’t miss is the ability of a church to to spend decades making someone think that conservatism is generally positive since JERRY FALWELL STOOD TO LOSE MONEY FROM DESEGREGATION.
It’s insane to me that the population of Atlanta is only 500k, but the metro area is 6,300k. Suburban sprawl completely out of control.
It’s just one poll. There’s a possibility that pollster’s methods have some sort of bias, or that there happened to be an error in sampling as there’s always a possibility there will be.
There are statistical models that take in various polls, remembering and taking into account the kinds of mistakes each given pollster tends to make, and calculates the chances of each candidate. That would be a (probably) more accurate look at Harris’s chances.
The only one I know is Qc125/338Canada. It was developed mostly in Quebec and then fine-tuned for other Canadian races, before finally being applied to a few other countries, including the US. That history might make it weaker at predicting the outcome of an American race compared to a home-grown model, though; I don’t really know.
Democrats have won some major statewide elections in recent years in Georgia, so no, it’s not necessarily an outlier.
