The trip was considered decisive for the start of his American campaign: President and candidate Joe Biden was visiting this weekend in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, a state which had been crucial for his victory in 2020. Acquired in Republican for around thirty years, Georgia then leaned towards the Democrats thanks to the votes of the black community, in the wake of the anti-racist “Black Lives Matter” mobilization. But in 2024, things could be different: while 95% of black women and 87% of black men voted for Joe Biden in 2020, only 55% of black voters said in April that they would support the Democratic candidate, according to Pew Research Center.
“The situation is particularly urgent in Georgia, which had played a crucial role” in electing two Democratic senators in Washington, “giving the party control of the upper house,” recalls the Financial Times. “Georgia has also been at the center of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the election, imploring local election officials to find “11,780 votes” to make him the winner.”
However, a recent survey led by the New York Times gives Donald Trump a lead in Georgia and four other decisive states (Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania), where Joe Biden is only in the lead in the pivotal state of Wisconsin.
Loss of speed in young people
This situation is due to the fact that “support for Joe Biden has waned among groups that were instrumental in his success in 2020,” according to the New York Timesparticularly young people and Black Americans, due to the “current discontent with the economic situation” and the fact that, according to them, “Joe Biden is not sufficiently confronting Israel over its actions in Gaza.”
Young, black and Hispanic voters have always constituted the social base of the Democratic Party. “Polls suggest that Donald Trump’s strength among young and non-white voters has at least temporarily shaken up the electoral map,” continues the New York daily.
Reclaiming the Black Community
To try to reverse this trend, Joe Biden notably visited Morehouse College this Sunday, May 19, a prestigious black institution – the one where Martin Luther King studied – to try to rally the local community. In front of 500 young graduates, he spoke a speech on the importance of freedoms and democracy, at stake according to him in the November election. A visit punctuated by some protests, with students refusing to stand up during his speech, or having worn symbols of Palestine such as the traditional keffiyeh scarf. Some teachers also said they would boycott the event, according to the New York Timesto protest against the American president’s management of the war in Gaza.
However, the fate of Joe Biden in Georgia is not sealed with less than six months before the elections, continues the daily, the early polls not necessarily being revealing, while “the breakthrough of Donald Trump among young traditionally Democratic voters , blacks and Hispanics may not be based on solid foundations. However, for Dontaye Carter, an official of the Democratic Party of Georgia, Joe Biden will have to strengthen his speech to the black community and defend his record as president: “the message, ‘everyone except Trump’ will no longer work”, he declares to Financial Times.
The economic daily also estimates that the Democrats could compensate for the loss of this electoral base by seeking out more moderate Republican voters, among the elderly or women, who are mainly opposed to the restrictions taken under the Trump mandate against abortion. Next decisive date in the race for the White House: Joe Biden and Donald Trump will hold their first televised debate at the end of June in Atlanta, which could begin to decide between them.