by Steve Cortes
New battleground state polling shows Georgia firmly back in the camp of former President Donald Trump with a commanding double-digit lead (49 percent to 39 percent) in a head-to-head race vs. Joe Biden.
In fact, per our polling and the preponderance of publicly available surveys, Trump looks poised to win nearly the entire southern third of America. With the one exception of New Mexico, Trump now leads strongly from Arizona all the way east to the Atlantic coast of North Carolina–a Southern Sweep.
This new Georgia poll was conducted by North Star Opinion Research for my populist right labor organization, the League of American Workers. It surveyed 600 likely Georgia voters with a sample universe that voted for Biden by a 2-point margin in 2020. This poll also showed Trump with a runaway 8-point lead in a multi-candidate field that included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West.
What explains this surge in a hotly contested race? On the national level, the main driver is crashing economic confidence as Bidenomics crushes household budgets and saps spirits. On the state level, the preventable Laken Riley tragedy is seared into the minds of Georgia voters who understandably blame Biden for her death.
On the economy, the recent wave of data proves that regular Americans understand the economy better than the alleged experts. Just a month ago, the chief economic writer for the foremost business publication in America, Grep Ip of the Wall Street Journal, had the gall to pen a condescending column titled “What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data.”
Well, Greg and his pals in the corporate media got it wrong. Again.
Things might be swell for the already-successful owners of assets in this inflationary economy, but working-class Americans are miserable, and for valid reasons. In fact, just three weeks after the Ip article, his own paper ran the front page headline “Growth Slows, Inflation Firms” in response to clear macro numbers showing descending expansion alongside stubbornly high inflation. This Bidenomics slouch into “stagflation” takes America back to the unfortunate economic malaise era of the 1970’s, only without the great music and fashion!
The economic decline was further evidenced by the recent release of the widely watched small business optimism index from the National Federation of Independent Business. It just hit the lowest levels of the Biden tenure in the White House. In fact, small businesses in America are now more pessimistic than during the worst days of the spring 2020 lockdowns, with the NFIB marker hitting a new 11 year low under Biden.
As the foremost concern on voters’ minds, economic issues provide the most compelling value proposition for Trump. Our Georgia survey asked if voters were better off under Trump or Biden, and the 45th president enjoys a landslide 21-point advantage, 54-33 percent. On that “better off” question, Trump has earned a stunning +31-point margin over Biden among blue-collar workers, and a +26-point lead among young voters 18-34 years old.
In addition to losing economic security, Americans correctly worry about personal safety as well, as Biden’s porous border invites millions to trespass into America, including some migrants with criminal intent. All these resulting migrant crimes are 100 percent preventable, including the brutal slaying of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student killed in broad daylight while out jogging on the University of Georgia campus.
Her indicted killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, crossed Biden’s porous border with ease. He then got arrested twice in America, in so-called sanctuary cities. Instead of facing deportation back to Venezuela, he continued to roam our streets until he savagely beat young Laken Riley to death.
Because most corporate media platforms have assiduously avoided covering this story, many Americans are unaware of Laken Riley’s tragedy, per our battleground polling. But in Georgia, as one might expect, awareness is widespread. For instance, our poll showed that 34 percent of Georgia voters know “a great deal” about the Riley murder, vs. Wisconsin, where only half that many, 17 percent, knew “a great deal.”
Perhaps even more importantly politically, a supermajority 61 percent of Georgia likely voters blame Biden for the slaying. Revealing the popular anger, 46 percent blame Biden “a great deal.” Even among Biden 2020 voters, 32 percent blame him for Riley’s death.
Put together, these two macro topics – Inflation and Immigration – create the political groundswell for a Southern Sweep by Trump. Swing state voters long for a return to prosperity, secure borders, and safe streets. These are the just demands of the honorable citizens of a great country. For a second time, these people demand a populist leader to stop this American carnage.
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Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.
