Former President Trump leads President Biden in a potential head-to-head rematch among Georgia voters, according to a new poll.
A poll published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) found the Republican challenger holds a 45% to 37% lead over his successor. Just 7% of Georgia voters were unwilling to support either candidate, 6% said they were unsure of who they would ultimately support and 6% said they would not vote.
The poll comes the day after Trump won his first 20 delegates in the race for the Republican nomination after securing 51% of the vote in the Iowa Caucus, leading all other Republicans in the contest, including Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson.
Biden trails Trump in part due to his historically low approval ratings and his ‘dismal’ support among independent voters, AJC’s Greg Bluestein and Michelle Baruchman wrote. Only 37% approved of the job he was doing in the White House.
As the Republican primary is officially underway, Trump’s support has swelled over recent months while Biden continues to falter in a state that helped dictate the results of their 2020 contest.
Nearly three-quarters of registered voters said they believed the U.S. was headed down the ‘wrong track’ and most disapproved of Biden serving at the helm.
In the new AJC poll, about 62% of registered voters disapproved of the president’s job performance. Among independents, Biden fared only slightly better, with a majority (54%) still disapproving of his performance.
In contrast, these same registered voters approve of their Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
‘About 57% of Georgia voters approve of his job performance, down slightly from this time last year. He has high marks among fellow Republicans (74%) and independents (52%). And, surprisingly, about 40% of Democrats and about 40% of Black voters view him positively,’ AFC Politics reported.
Trump’s current 8-point lead comes as he and Biden were virtually tied in the same poll conducted in November. At the time, Trump was at 45% to Biden’s 44%.
In 2020, Biden narrowly won Georgia over Trump by less than 12,000 votes. The result was the opposite outcome of the 2016 presidential contest when Trump carried the state over Hillary Clinton.
The AJC poll was conducted Jan. 3-11 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and involved 1,007 registered voters. Its margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.