All sides of the presidential campaign agree that Georgia is a very important battleground state this year. Joe Biden won the state in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to carry it since Bill Clinton in 1992. Both Democrats went on to win Georgia Senate races in that cycle.
Georgia was also where Donald Trump sought to “find” enough votes to go ahead in a call to the secretary of state that led to one of his indictments. So in 2024, both parties are trying hard to win over voters in the state.
This week, the Trump campaign committed a Georgia-related gaffe: It launched a digital ad campaign, which included a map not of Georgia the state, but rather Georgia the country.
Wrong Georgia, Typical Trump
“Trump’s campaign launched targeted digital ads on social media over the weekend focusing on local Republicans with a beautiful backdrop of a … mountain range in Georgia.” -Atlanta Journal-Const.
The only problem: It’s in the country of Georgia. pic.twitter.com/ujBTZAqHSN
— NewsCat 📰🗞️NO DMs (@typocatCAv2) September 24, 2024
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According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Trump’s campaign “launched targeted digital ads on social media over the weekend focusing on local Republicans with a beautiful backdrop of an endless mountain range in Georgia.” However, they included photographs of the former Soviet Republic, not the Southern U.S. state.
“Online sleuths linked the image to the country of Georgia, not the battleground state that Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are fighting to win in November,” the newspaper said, adding that the image was from the Shutterstock image library. “The ad was pulled from Facebook early Monday shortly after it appeared in the Politically Georgia newsletter. The ad tracking firm AdImpact said about $6,000 worth of the ads ran on Facebook from Sept. 10 until Monday.”
A Trump staffer presumably searched the library for “Georgia,” and came up with that photo, which caption reads “Blooming white rhododendron flowers in the Caucasus mountains in June. Cloudy morning view of the mountain hill in Upper Svanetia, Georgia.”
The Trump campaign had made a similar mistake during the contested election in 2020, when they spelled “Georgia” wrong when inviting supporters to a rally for Trump at the state capitol.
Atlanta!!!#MarchForTrump Rally to demand #ElectionIntegrityNOW
🇺🇸 Saturday, NOV 21st
🇺🇸 12:00 PM
🇺🇸 Georgia State CapitolIt’s time to #AuditTheVote and demand transparency.#StopTheSteaI #ElectionIntegrity #MAGAMillionMarch #magadragtheinterstate #gagop #gapol pic.twitter.com/BKB5u02UwK
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) November 16, 2020
According to RealClearPolling, recent polling averages have the race in Georgia either tied, or with Trump ahead by a point or two. FiveThirtyEight’s model, meanwhile, has Trump winning the state 54 times out of 100 and Harris winning 46 times out of 100.
Photo courtesy of Political Tribune image library.
