Georgia Early Voting Results & Polls: Trump Holding Narrow Lead Over Clinton

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Donald Trump at an Atlanta rally on June 15. (Getty)

Georgia, with its 16 electoral votes, has emerged as a surprise battleground state, but Donald Trump has taken the lead in most polls in the Peach State. Hillary Clinton isn’t far behind, as the latest poll shows a tight race. Georgia has also been holing Early Voting since October 17, with the early voting period ending on November 4.

On November 3, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump ahead among 937 registered voters by a single point. However, that’s within the 3.2 percent margin of error. The poll also shows Libertarian Gary Johnson with 10 percent support. Without Johnson, the poll still shows Trump with a 1-point lead over Clinton, 47-46 percent.

Candidate Percentage Points
Donald Trump 44
Hillary Clinton 43
Gary Johnson 10
Other 2
Undecided 1

Recent polls included by Real Clear Politics show Trump with an average 5.7 percent lead over Clinton in a two-way race, including the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. That high average is due to an Emerson College poll released on November 2 that gives Trump a whopping 9-point lead over Clinton among 650 likely voters. That poll was taken between October 29 and October 31.

Candidate Percentage Points
Trump 51
Clinton 42
Johnson 2
Jill Stein 3
Undecided 2

A new poll released on November 4 from Landmark/Rosetta Stone, which included 1,000 interviews, gives Trump a 2-point lead over Clinton. That poll mirrors the NBC News/WSJ/Marist poll of early voters.

The concern for Clinton among early voters in Georgia is the lower number of African Americans voting early in the state. CNN data shows that, as of November 1, 1.5 million votes had already been cast in the state. Of those, 31 percent were from African American voters, a decrease from 36 percent at the same time in 2012.

Overall, there has been a decrease in the number of African Americans taking part in early voting, which pundits have seen as a sign of concern for Clinton. On November 2, The New York Times reported that black turnout in North Carolina decreased by 16 percent in comparison to 2012. In Florida, the number of black early voters have made up 15 percent of the electorate so far, a drop from 25 percent in 2012.

Georgia has voted for Republican presidential candidates during every election since 1996. Since 1984, the only time Georgia voted for the Democratic presidential candidate was 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for his first term. Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 8 percent in 2012.