The killing of a nursing student by an illegal immigrant and the Fani Willis’ scandal-plagued prosecution of former President Trump has set the stage to flip the key battleground state back into the Trump column.
The polls were already daunting for President Biden in the Peach State, where he’s trailing Mr. Trump by 7 points. The former president’s lead could grow further in the wake of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s Feb. 22 murder, allegedly by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who was allowed into the country under Mr. Biden’s border policies.
“It’s a problem for Biden in that it is a specific, tangible tragedy that fits into the narrative that the southern border is out of control,” Nathan Gonzales, who runs the non-partisan campaign analysis site Inside Elections. “And Biden is not doing what people think he should be doing to secure it. We are talking about a young woman who was killed. That’s powerful.”
Mr. Trump’s lead over Mr. Biden in Georgia has grown as election subversion charges lodged against the former president in Fulton County were sidelined by a scandal involving District Attorney Fani Willis.
Ms. Willis faces removal from the case amid accusations she hired her boyfriend, divorce lawyer Nathan Wade, to prosecute Mr. Trump. She is accused of benefiting from his big paycheck when the pair took vacations and cruises together.
The scandal has discredited the case, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Joshua McKoon said and has riled up Republican voters who believe the former president has been unfairly charged for contesting President Biden’s victory in the state in 2020.
“A year ago, Willis was being lauded as some kind of modern-day Eliot Ness by people on the left,” Mr. McKoon said. “And now it’s more like she’s with the Keystone Cops. To the extent the issue drives the election, it’s certainly going to drive the Republican base.”
Mr. Biden was the first presidential candidate to win the state in nearly three decades, but he won by fewer than 12,000 votes or about one-quarter of 1%.
If the president loses Georgia in November, his pathway to victory will be far more difficult.
The presidential election is expected to hinge on Georgia and five other swing states.
If Mr. Trump can reclaim Georgia and pick up a win in Michigan, where he lost in 2020 but now leads in polls, it will mean Mr. Biden likely cannot win without victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. He trails Mr. Trump in all four.
Just a few weeks ago, a coalition of Democratic strategists warned Mr. Biden could be in jeopardy of losing some support from critical Black voters in Georgia who helped seal his victory four years ago based on their reduced voter turnout in 2022 and polls showing support among them for the president had dipped to 50%, down from 86% in July of 2021.
Shortly after taking office, Mr. Biden stopped construction of the border wall and reversed other Trump-era policies aimed at preventing illegal immigration. He must now contend with intense voter dissatisfaction about how he has handled the nation’s illegal immigration problems, which have impacted states far from the southern border, including Georgia.
New polling released Tuesday by Gallup found Americans viewed immigration as the nation’s biggest problem.
Separately, the poll found that 55% of U.S. adults believe “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to U.S. vital interests. The prior high was 50% in 2004.
Ms. Riley, a nursing student on the dean’s list, was out jogging around campus Thursday when Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, kidnapped her and killed her with blunt force trauma, authorities said.
Mr. Ibarra was released into the United States after illegally crossing the border through El Paso, Texas, in September 2022. He was one of 183,000 illegals encountered at the Southwest border that month, a 245% increase from September 2021 figures, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
He was freed again after an arrest in New York for endangering a child and was wanted in Georgia for failing to appear in court on a shoplifting charge.
Mr. Ibarra had no connection to Ms. Riley, and the attack occurred in broad daylight.
“The very tragic and apparently gruesome murder of a University of Georgia student by an undocumented migrant has put the border crisis front and center in Georgia,” pollster Matt Towery said.
The Trump-aligned Super PAC, Make America Great Again, began running a new ad on Tuesday interspersing clips about Ms. Riley’s death with claims by Mr. Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris declaring the border is secure.
It concludes with the message: “You’re not safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
It’s a compelling TV ad, but nothing guarantees a Trump victory in November, Mr. Towery said.
The election is months away, and other factors could determine how voters feel about race.
In addition to Georgia’s election interference case, Mr. Trump faces criminal charges in two federal cases related to storing classified documents and election interference, and in Manhattan, where he’s charged with lying about hush money payments in 2016 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and two others.
In an Emerson College poll earlier this month of 1,000 registered voters in Georgia, 54% said Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments raise doubts about voting for him, while 46% said it was not a serious consideration.
“The current polls showing Trump with a fairly significant lead in Georgia will definitely narrow by November,” Mr. Towery said. “But he certainly has more than a decent shot at carrying the state.”