Harris says path to White House runs through Georgia

The vice-president held a star-studded campaign rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, at which she challenged her Republican rival Donald Trump to meet her on the debate stage.

Pop star Megan Thee Stallion and rapper/singer Quavo performed while Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock also addressed the crowd of about 10,000 people.

The possibility of Democrats winning in the battleground state was a stretch one month ago, but some analysts now believe a new face on top of the ticket and a fresh burst of energy may change everything.

Ms Harris replaced Mr Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee after the president announced he was withdrawing from the race.

"It has been a reset button in so many ways," Amy Morton, the CEO of Georgia-based consulting firm Southern Majority, told the BBC.

"It completely changed the landscape of Georgia."

Taking the stage in Atlanta to a raucous crowd on Tuesday evening, Ms Harris said the momentum in the race was shifting.

She described her "people-powered" campaign as the underdog in the race, but pointed to how Mr Biden carried the state in 2020.

"I am very clear the path to the White House runs right through this state," she said.

Ms Harris later turned to the subject of September's presidential debate, which Mr Trump has not fully committed to yet.

"Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because, as the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face."

Swing states like Georgia, which Mr Biden won by the narrowest margin in 2020, are fiercely contested because they can lean either to Republicans or Democrats and play a decisive role in presidential elections.

It's a state Republicans are looking to flip back red.

Donald Trump will also be campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday - at the same venue as Ms Harris - to cement his support in the swing state.

Congressman Hank Jackson, a Georgia Democrat, told BBC News an "explosion of enthusiasm has been unleashed" since Ms Harris stepped up as the nominee, adding that she had "activated... all demographics" in the state.

Democrats in Georgia depend heavily on strong turnout among black voters, a state with one of the highest African American populations in the country.

Polls were suggesting that the state was drifting away from Mr Biden, University of Georgia Professor Charles Bullock told BBC News.

The state is on Ms Harris's "watch list", he added, noting she has made more than a dozen visits.

In a campaign strategy memo, Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon lists Georgia as one of several Sun Belt states - as well as North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada - where the campaign plans to focus efforts ahead of November.

Before Mr Biden dropped from the race, Ms Morton, a Democratic political consultant in Georgia, said she was concerned about voter turnout, finding many throughout Georgia to be less engaged than when they broke records in 2020.

But now "that's changed completely", she says.

"We've gone back into all of our planning to calculate for higher turnout because enthusiasm on the ground is so much more apparent than it was in the beginning of June."

Ms Morton said she had seen upticks in volunteer signups and social media engagement for down ballot candidates too since Ms Harris entered the race.

Recent polling suggests Ms Harris leads Trump by one point - 43% to 42% - among registered voters nationwide, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.

Ms Morton said she thought those margins would only increase, specifically among Georgia voters.

But there is still strong support for Trump in the state.

Georgia is "Trump country", said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from the state. She posted details about his Saturday event on Twitter and claimed Ms Harris was a "radical extremist".

Ms Harris has been facing attacks over handling the crisis at the southern border as vice-president and in her special role trying to stop the migrants at source.

Although Georgia is far removed, the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student allegedly killed by a Venezuelan who had entered the US illegally, made the issue of immigration more important to Georgian voters.

At Tuesday's rally, Ms Harris said she would resurrect the border security bill that she said Trump helped kill, and sign it into law.

She also touted her experience visiting underground tunnels at the California border and as a prosecutor taking on human traffickers

Mr Bullock said Trump will have to be careful in his messaging to Georgian voters. His personal attacks on Ms Harris - and not on her policies - could alienate women voters who found him offensive, he said.

Trump's allies have attacked Ms Harris’s background, claiming she was a "DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire".

Ms Harris could also gain ground in the state by appealing to a significant group of establishment Republican voters who are less sold on Trump.

"There is a share of them - and these would be white college educated voters - who maybe find Trump offensive, they may not have liked the chaos of his administration, they may not like his misogyny," Mr Bullock said.

-BBC