Trump or Biden? Meh. Economic worries and political weariness in Atlanta's bellwether precinct give a taste of 2024

If the presidential election were held today, then Donald Trump would win the state of Georgia, according to an exclusive poll for DailyMail.com. Just don't tell Pam and Patricia.

'No way am I voting for him again,' said Pam, 64, who worked in accounting before retiring.

'The Republicans have really got to come up with someone better.'

The two friends were treating themselves to a rare breakfast in J,. Christopher's diner in Brookhaven on the edge of Atlanta. 

This is an affluent area. The main street, only a 20 -minute drive or so from downtown, studded with smart restaurants and a barre studio. 

Smart low-rise apartment blocks back on to double-garaged family homes, where the fall leaves are raked into neat piles.

It is mostly conservative and mostly white. How it votes next year could go a long way to deciding how this once deep-red state, which voted for Trump in 2016 before flipping to Joe Biden, awards its 16 electoral college votes. 

Voting for Biden this time around was simply not an option for Pam.

'I can't stand him, what he's done to our country and the economy,' she said, before Patricia, 62, a teletherapist chimed in: 'And his age.'

They fall into the category of 'double disapprovers,' a cohort of voters who are unimpressed at the thought of facing the same choice as 2020. 

How they break next year could be crucial in battlegrounds such as Georgia. 

Biden won by the narrowest of margins in 2020. He took 11,000 votes more than Trump, or about 0.2 percent of the turnout.

It underlined how Georgia is not the deep red state of decades past. The rapid growth of Atlanta has seen the balance shift to the point where last year Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock both won reelection, seeing off Trump-backed challengers in the process. 

The result is that Georgia will be one of the hardest fought states in next year's presidential election.

Yet voters sound weary.

The DailyMail.com poll, published Monday, has Trump ahead in the state by three points but that is largely because he has lost fewer of his 2020 supporters than Biden has.

So while Biden and Trump both scored about 47 percent of the vote last time around, our poll found the president has shed 11 points while the former president has lost eight points.

This corner of Brookhaven, that falls in the Ashford Park Elementary Precinct, may offer the best insight into what happens next year.

'If we can get a Republican win with voters right here, then we can win Georgia,' said Republican political operative Brian Robinson.

The Ashford Park Elementary precinct stands in the western corner of Dekalb County, which is populated overwhelmingly by Democratic Party voters.

Yet in 2016, this precinct went for Trump by the narrowest of margins: He collected 809 votes compared with 782 for Hillary Clinton.

That was reversed in 2020, when 1075 picked Biden over the 890 who voted for Trump. 

Trump is still the answer for businesswoman Cindy Lites, owner of lifestyle store Marguerite's on Dresden.

'It's going to take someone ornery and tough to stand up and change things,' she said. 

2022 was a bumper year for her store as people splurged after the pandemic. But the worsening economic picture has 

'This year has not been so good,' she said. 'This is a moneyed area and even people here are feeling it.'

The economy could be the number one factor in deciding how this area and Georgia in general votes, said Robinson.

'If 12 months from now, people feel the way that they do currently about the economy ... concerns about inflation, they're feeling the pinch when they go to the grocery store ... that's really bad news for Joe Biden,' he said.

One thing that is not going to change, he added, is that Democrats have a candidate in his eighties.

'Georgians have concerns about his age and cognitive ability,' he said. 'And Democrats say the same thing as Republicans.'

Either way it will be tight. For Republicans, a win means winning over those Kemp-Warnock voters who liked the governor's conservative positions and the way he opened up the state early during COVID, but who were turned off by Trump's claims of election fraud.

And for Democrats is all about the enthusiasm and mobilization of the state's black vote.

'It is disengaged right now,' he said. 'And if the Democrats make the election about Biden's record, I'm not sure they get it.'