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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump by 7 points in Georgia, according to a new poll. The latest Quinnipiac University survey finds Biden's support at 51 percent and Trump's at 44 percent, with 4 percent of respondents undecided. Biden led by only 3 points in the same poll in September, before the first presidential debate and Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis. Biden is now viewed favorably by 51 percent of Georgians, compared to 46 percent who view him negatively. Trump is underwater at 43 positive and 54 negative. Trump will campaign in Georgia, which last went for the Democratic nominee...

Democrats’ hopes of capturing statewide office in Georgia may have been dashed in 2018, but this year the party appears on the cusp of a breakthrough. The state’s two Republican senators are facing increasingly competitive reelection bids, and President Trump’s poll numbers are suffering there as he scrambles to get a handle on the coronavirus pandemic and respond to ongoing civil unrest over racial injustice and police brutality. Democrats, meanwhile, say that changing demographics in Georgia have made the state ripe for political change. Some 322,000 new voters joined the state’s rolls last year, including many young voters and people...

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday said the federal government has a responsibility to protect statues and monuments of historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus. Speaking at a press conference in Wilmington, Del., the former vice president defended monuments dedicated to past presidents who owned slaves. Biden made the case that those public statues should be preserved, while monuments to Confederate leaders should be removed peacefully by local officials. “The idea of comparing whether or not George Washington owned slaves or Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and somebody who was in rebellion committing treason trying to...

The largest outside group supporting President Trump’s reelection believes it’s identified some of the “hidden” supporters that could tip the balance of the 2020 election in favor of Republicans. Pollsters hired by America First Policies (AFP) have spent the past two months interviewing hundreds of self-described independent voters at focus groups conducted in major cities across nine battleground states. A source close to the group shared videos of the interviews with The Hill, which featured Trump voters from 2016 revealing that they would not discuss their support for the president with pollsters or acquaintances because they were afraid of backlash...

President Trump’s allies see reasons to worry about the rise of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is gaining steadily in Democratic primary polls and attracting huge crowds of supporters to her campaign rallies. The Hill interviewed more than a half-dozen current or former advisers to Trump, and about half viewed Warren as the most formidable nominee in a head-to-head match-up against Trump, while the other half described former Vice President Joe Biden as the tougher general election foe. To many Trump World insiders, Warren increasingly looks like the candidate with the best shot at winning the nomination. The two most...

Joe Biden is ready to scrap. The former vice president is firing back at his rivals and vowing to be more aggressive at the second presidential debates after weeks of sustained attacks against his civil rights record left his supporters frustrated and worried about his passive approach. The tipping point, according to allies and campaign strategists, came on Wednesday at a NAACP presidential candidate forum, where Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) accused Biden of being the “architect of mass incarceration” for supporting a 1994 crime bill. “You can't be called the architect of mass incarceration and remain quiet,” a Biden ally...

President Trump’s job approval rating is the highest it’s been in two years, boosted by voter optimism about the economy, according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey. The survey found that 48 percent approve of the job Trump is doing, compared to 52 percent who said they disapprove. That’s up from 45 percent approval in March. The last time the president’s job approval rating reached 48 percent in the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey was in June of 2017.

Billionaire conservative businessman Charles Koch’s political network is freezing out Republicans that it believes have violated its fiscally conservative principles, and is, at least for now, only supporting four Senate GOP candidates in the fall. The Koch network is backing GOP Senate candidates in Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee and Florida, signaling it will be selective in where it engages as Republicans seek to retain or grow their narrow 51-49 majority. At a Monday presentation to about 500 of the network’s top donors at a five-star resort in the Rocky Mountains, Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips made an example out of...

Jeb Bush and key members of his national finance team addressed top donors on Wednesday in a conciliatory conference call in which he expressed dismay over the outcome of the race. "I'm sorry that it didn't turn out the way that I intended when I launched the campaign," Bush said. The former Florida governor said he saw a path to win the nomination running as a "reform-minded conservative," but acknowledged that wasn't what the electorate was looking for in 2016. -snip- Also addressing donors on Wednesday's conference call were Bush national finance chairman Woody Johnson, who owns the New York...

The liberal group Credo Action is demanding Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign a day after the Florida congresswoman accused millennials of “complacency” on abortion rights. In a petition sent to the 3.9 million progressive activists the group claims as members, Credo cited Schultz’s comments on abortion, which infuriated many liberals, as well as a litany of other offenses, in calling for her to be removed.

Former Mississippi Senate candidate Chris McDaniel (R) on Tuesday accused Republican leaders of enforcing a double standard in their response to the revelation that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002. ADVERTISEMENTMcDaniel nearly took out Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) in the this year's GOP Senate primary. He was the target of attacks from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and some in the state GOP who said he should withdraw from the race because he had booked a speaking engagement at a conservative rally alongside a white nationalist. McDaniel ultimately withdrew from the rally....