CNN predicts that former President Donald Trump will win the Georgia primary. Still, as the numbers come in, the suburbs of the Peach State are worrying the Republican presidential nominee.
While Trump is expected to win by a wide margin, it's worth noting that Nikki Haley — her longtime rival in the primary season is now out — is still picking up significant votes in the Beach State.
More specifically, earlier in the night, Hawley won 35% of the vote in Chatham County, located on Georgia's shared border with her home state of South Carolina. The county, which has a large African American base in Savannah, voted Democratic in 2020.
“The suburbs are trending Democratic, which helped Joe Biden win by 19 points,” explained CNN's John King, who said it should be one of Trump's areas of focus over the next eight months.
Muskogee County is another part of Georgia. While it's a large Democratic party and likely to go to Biden, King said Trump's efforts should be aimed at narrowing the margin when it comes to battleground states like Georgia, where close elections are won by a relatively small number of votes.
Remember: In 2020, Biden won Georgia by 12,000 votes.
As more results come in, Haley continues to cannibalize Trump's votes in areas like DeKalb County and Fulton County, the large population centers that gave Biden Georgia in 2020 and ultimately won him the presidency. So it looks like Trump will continue to be weak in the same Georgia areas he was in 2020, King explained.
This post has been updated with additional results from Georgia's GOP primary.
