IN GEORGIA, POST-CONVICTION RELIEF FOR TRUMP. This newsletter has been watching the polls carefully for any sign of change related to the guilty verdict in the Manhattan trial of former President Donald Trump. The trial ended 26 days ago, which can seem like years with the pace of politics these days. But the fact is, millions of voters are still processing the results of Trump’s trial, and the full effects might not yet be visible.

So far, looking only at the national polls, it appears Trump’s conviction has narrowed his already-narrow lead over President Joe Biden by perhaps a point. In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump leads Biden by a single point, 46.2% to 45.2%. In the FiveThirtyEight average of polls, Biden leads Trump by 0.2 points, 40.9 to 40.7. So it’s close — almost exactly tied, actually — and it has been made a little closer by Trump’s conviction. 

The state polls — the critical key states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that will determine who wins — are a different story. Trump still leads in all of them except Wisconsin, where he is tied with Biden, according to the RealClearPolitics average. And in Georgia, a new poll shows Trump as strong as he ever was.

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In the survey, done by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, Trump leads Biden by 5 points, 43% to 38% — just outside the poll’s margin of error. Together with the two other polls that have have been done since Trump’s May 30 conviction, the survey shows Trump’s support holding steady despite momentous events.

A Quinnipiac poll taken from May 30 to June 3 — that is, starting the day of the conviction, probably hours before it happened, and going three more days — showed Trump up by 5 points. A poll by the Hill and Emerson taken from June 13-18, that is, two weeks after the conviction, showed Trump up by 4 points. And now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has Trump up by 5. What that shows is nearly four weeks after the conviction, Trump’s support in Georgia appears to be unchanged.

That is critically important for Trump’s Electoral College path to the presidency. Here is that path: He needs to first win all the states he won in 2020, which is probably well within his reach. Then he needs to win Georgia and Arizona, two states he lost very narrowly in 2020. And then, if he does that, he needs to win just one of three remaining swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin. If Georgia and Arizona are already won, just one of those states will put Trump over 270 electoral votes.

So a Trump win starts with Georgia and Arizona. And the new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Trump doing well in Georgia. (Trump is actually doing slightly better in Arizona, where he leads Biden by 5.6 points in the RealClearPolitics average.) If Trump can win those states, he will have his work cut out for him in any one of the upper-tier states, which polls show to be extremely tight. But right now, at least, the first step of Trump’s path back, Georgia, appears to be solidly in his column.