Republican voters Brad and Lisa Wells have three children, a happy marriage, and agree on almost everything. Except Donald Trump.

When the couple voted at an early polling centre in the Georgia suburb of Acworth last week, Brad backed Kamala Harris to become America’s next commander-in-chief, while Lisa supported the former US president.

Asked what it’s like discussing politics around the kitchen table, their answer is simple: “We don’t.”

For Brad, who describes himself as a “middle-of-the-road Republican”, the decision to vote for Harris was less about the Democratic candidate and more about her incendiary rival.

“I don’t like Donald Trump’s character, so I’m voting for character over policies,” the IT worker says.

For Lisa, however, it was all about the issues she believes only Trump can fix.

“The economy is number one for me, national security is number two and immigration is number three,” says the school psychologist.

“I wish he would stop the name-calling, for sure, but I had to look beyond that.”

Welcome to the divided battleground of Georgia, the Deep South state that secured Joe Biden’s election victory when it flipped to the Democrats in 2020 for the first time in almost 30 years.

But it’s also the state where the 81-year-old’s devastating debate performance in the capital city of Atlanta led him to withdraw from the race and endorse Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.

But with only days left in the campaign, Harris is now in a bruising contest to convince enough voters to keep Georgia in Democratic hands.

According to the latest FiveThirtyEight polling aggregate, Trump is ahead by 1.5 percentage points in the so-called Peach State, where more than 3.5 million people have already cast a ballot.

“This is unprecedented in Georgia history,” says Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “People are really engaged.”

But as election night nears, tensions are mounting over what might happen if Trump loses again.

It was Georgia, after all, where the former president and his allies embarked on a sweeping scheme to overthrow the 2020 election results, resulting in a grand jury indictment for which the Republican candidate still faces trial.

That scheme, according to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, included setting up phony electors to produce fake votes, tampering with electronic voting machines, misusing the power of the Justice Department, and pressuring state and federal officials not to certify Biden’s win.

Among those state officials was Raffensperger himself, who Trump called on January 2, 2021 – four days before the attack on the US Capitol – in a last-ditch effort to retain power.

In an occasionally threatening phone call that lasted almost an hour, Trump demanded that his fellow Republican “find” the votes he needed to put him ahead of Biden, and in turn, win the White House.

“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” he said in the now-infamous exchange.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this.”

Deniers a ‘little smarter’ than in 2020

The question now is to what extent history will repeat.

Three recounts of the state’s ballots after the 2020 poll found no evidence of election fraud, and legal cases and recounts in other US states garnered similar results.

But Trump has already been sowing doubt about this year’s election by suggesting that the only way Democrats could win is if they cheat, and saying he would accept the results only if they are “free and fair”.

What’s more, in Georgia, his allies have been involved in various efforts to influence election counting processes, which critics warned could create chaos and confusion, or potentially affect the outcome.

While the courts have since pushed back, key strategies included changing the rules to give local officials more discretion to delay certifying the results, or mandating hand-counting paper ballots in each precinct.

Emails have also revealed that some of the local officials involved in those attempted changes are co-ordinating directly with operatives in the Georgia Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, and election deniers who helped Trump try to overthrow the 2020 results.

One of the most prominent examples is Cleta Mitchell, who assisted Trump on his infamous phone call to Raffensperger. She now runs a group called the Election Integrity Network, which has recruited an army of like-minded people to become poll workers and monitors across Georgia.

“It’s just part of a larger strategy in Georgia from election deniers to disrupt the 2024 election,” says Max Flugwrath from Fight Fair, the political organisation founded by Democrat firebrand Stacey Abrams to fight voter suppression in the US.

“They’re building off what happened in 2020, but they’ve had four years now, so they’re a little more sophisticated, a little smarter, and a little more strategic.”

Georgia’s changing face

What makes Georgia such an intense battleground is the state’s rapidly changing demographics. For years, Georgia had been among the safest Republican strongholds in the country, and until Biden came along, no Democratic presidential candidate had carried the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

However, census data shows that the state has become increasingly urban as its population shifts away from the rural areas that were once its backbone to its three fastest-growing cities: the capital, Atlanta; the leafy regional haven of Savannah; and the golfing mecca of Augusta.

Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific American voters are also increasing, particularly in the metropolitan suburbs that helped propel Biden to victory, while the white non-college-educated voters in small rural counties are becoming increasingly Republican.

“The challenge facing the Republican Party in the state is that their base is shrinking,” says Emory University political scientist and election forecaster Alan Abramowitz.

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“So for Republicans to win, they have to offset that – either by increasing their margins further among white working-class voters, and/or by trying to make inroads among traditionally Democratic voters, such as Latinos and African Americans.”

With almost 11 million people, Georgia is younger, more progressive and less white than it’s ever been – which Democrats hope will give Harris an advantage. But Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, the executive director of the Georgia Democrats, says that while he’s “nauseously optimistic” of a Harris victory, there’s still a significant number of voters – particularly people of colour – that need to be convinced.

“We have a lot we need to fix,” he says. “Georgia is one of only nine states in the country that has not expanded Medicaid. We have one of the highest, if not the highest, black maternal mortality rates in the country. Access to abortion care is at an all-time low here, and if you live in a rural part of our state and you’re looking for a tier-one trauma centre, you’re probably going to have to drive over 100 miles to get the care that you need.”

In an election campaign where abortion is front and centre, there is probably no more poignant example than the case of Amber Thurman, a young Georgia mother who died while crossing state lines after doctors delayed necessary care due to the state’s six-week abortion ban.

Thurman had gone to North Carolina for a medical abortion but experienced complications after taking the pills she had been prescribed. She then suffered a septic infection and required a dilation and curettage procedure – which happens to be a crime in Georgia, with up to 10 years’ jail, if it’s done outside specific circumstances.

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It took doctors 20 hours before they took her in for surgery, but by that stage, it was too late.

It’s stories like this that resonate deeply with young female voters like KT Lambright and CJ Cowan, who cast their first ballot in a presidential election last week, both in favour of Harris.

“Trump got in when we were in seventh grade, and now we’re juniors in college, so we’ve been under this Trump legacy for most of our lives,” says Lambright.

Cowan adds: “We want to move forward. We’re tired of these old white guys being in office.”

Across town, Gabriel Page, co-chair of the Georgia Young Republicans, takes a different view.

The 22-year-old recently graduated from college and entered the workforce, but he feels like he’s “pinching pennies” to pay for the rising cost of groceries and petrol.

“Practically speaking, it would be nice to have someone who is younger,” he says of Trump, who is 78 and now the oldest person running for office.

“But at the same time, I think what resonates most is that he is addressing these issues and talking about the economy.”

Whatever happens in Georgia, the outcome is likely to be close. The question is, will it be secure, free and fair?

“I have no control over human behaviour,” says Raffensperger. “But what I will make sure is that I will hold both parties accountable for the voters of Georgia, and I stand ready to defend the results of the election. With election officials all across the states, we will do our job.”

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