John Jefferson
ATLANTA – Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon is “cautiously optimistic” that Republicans can win back the Peach State after it emerged as a critical battleground in the previous presidential race.
The path to victory lies in two key blocs – early voters, and those who lean Republican but are largely apathetic to the process overall – McKoon indicated in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“We feel good about things here in Georgia,” the former state senator said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do over the next month or so, but we feel like we’re in position to win.”
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He pointed to some recent surveys that show former President Trump with a slight edge over Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as early figures on absentee voting.
Early and absentee voters were key to President Biden’s victory nationwide in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic largely forced Americans to stay home.
In Georgia, parts of which were ravaged by Hurricane Helene just over a week ago, early and absentee voters may prove just as critical this year. Biden beat Trump in the Peach State by roughly 12,000 votes in 2020.
“One very important lesson is the importance of early voting. We have three weeks of in-person early voting here in Georgia. Republicans traditionally have not done a whole lot to target our voters to get them out early – to make a plan and go ahead and bank those votes,” McKoon said.
“As a result, we had to spend an enormous amount of time and resources trying to move the vast majority of our voters to the polls on Election Day.”
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Motivating many of those likely voters to turn out early, McKoon explained, frees up state party resources “to focus on low-propensity voters who are likely to vote for President Trump, if we just get them to the polls.”
“But of course, those voters need to be touched multiple times. And so, early voting plays a huge role in our overall strategy,” McKoon said.
When asked how low-propensity voters could be reached, the Republican official explained it’s more a matter of outreach than identification.
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“Of course, all of that requires resources. That requires money – put mail in the mailbox, ads on television, telephone calls to their home, knocking on their door. We’re trying to do all of those things,” McKoon said.
Another factor of the Trump campaign’s nationwide outreach – and in Georgia, in particular – is convincing Black male voters to vote Republican.
Trump allies have said that securing roughly 20% of support from Black men across the U.S. could be critical to swaying the election in his favor.
A recent Howard University public opinion poll found that roughly one in five Black men under age 50 who are living in battleground states support Trump.
“You see the work that’s being done, you know, Black Voices for Trump, a lot of the other movements, grassroots movements, around the state. Direct voter contact, again, is really king in this area. But no one’s better at that than President Trump himself,” McKoon said.
“That’s really about economic anxiety and the feeling that this administration, with its open borders policies, are making it even more difficult for Black voters to get ahead in this country.”
Georgia’s early voting period runs from Oct. 15 through Nov. 1.
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