Trump's election prospects suffer unexpected blow in key battleground states: report

Donald Trump's re-election prospects suffered a body blow last week in the key battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia through no fault of his campaign.

This time it was due to the weather.

According to a report from Politico, Hurricane Helene not only ravaged communities, leaving heartbreaking death and destruction in its wake, but also disproportionately pummeled areas that are Republican strongholds – and that could have a serious impact on the former president's election hopes.

As Politico's Ariel Wittenberg, Avery Ellfeldt and Thomas Frank reported, "The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties."

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With rescue efforts still underway, victims of the hurricane are more concerned with getting their lives back and dealing with the devastation, with heading to the polls being the last thing on their minds.

Add to that, local familiar polling locations may no longer exist.

As Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity put it, "There’s going to be a lot of [voting] alterations, and it probably is going to affect turnout."

Politico is reporting, "... both states face crucial decisions in the next few days about how to help people register and vote after massive flooding ripped away roads, shuttered towns and dispersed residents. Those include whether to extend next week’s voter registration deadlines, grant more time for voters to cast absentee ballots, and set up new polling places in areas where floods destroyed roads."

Mail-in voting already appears to be way down with the report noting, "State records show that nearly 40,000 absentee ballots were mailed to voters in the 25 North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster following Helene. Fewer than 1,000 have been returned."

According to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, "In a state like North Carolina where margins matter, then every little tweak to the electorate could be the tweak that makes the difference. It’s right on the razor’s edge between red and blue.”

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