‘I’m not worried at all. I heard from the same naysayers in 2020, and we shocked the world. We’re getting the treatment as a premier battleground state, but we need to continue to do the work ourselves on the ground.’

Georgia” podcast he plans to help mobilize Democrats across the nation. He likes to say he comes from the state that “literally saved the whole country” in the last election cycle by voting to oust Trump and electing him and Ossoff.

“The president is in the right place,” Warnock said last week at Biden’s event in Atlanta, “because we know that the road to the White House goes through Georgia.”

Uphill battle for GOP, too

Republicans, too, face steep internal divisions in a state Trump said is a linchpin to his comeback bid.

Case in point: Republican Nikki Haley collected more than 77,000 votes in the state’s primary — including at least 20,000 after she dropped out of the race. And Gov. Brian Kemp, who issued a tepid endorsement of Trump on Tuesday, has refused to say whether he’ll campaign with him.

What’s more, there’s a belief in Democratic circles that potential third-party candidates could damage Trump more than Biden. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drew disgruntled conservatives to a recent Atlanta event, while former GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan could appeal to reluctant Trump supporters if he runs.

But the primary yielded red flags for Democrats as well. Nearly 300,000 more Georgians voted in the GOP primary than the Democratic primary. That’s partly because Republicans had an active race for the White House for part of the three-week early voting period. But Republican leaders took it as evidence their partisans were more energized.

And more than 6,000 Democrats left the ballot blank after being urged to protest Biden’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war, although it’s unclear how many of the blank ballots came from protesters. State Rep. Ruwa Romman, an organizer of the movement, said she hopes it can spur Biden to change his foreign policy approach by November.

“We’ll continue to show up. I’m a firm believer in the reverse coattails theory,” said Romman, a Duluth Democrat who is the state’s only Palestinian American legislator. “If people like me do our jobs, we’ll increase turnout.”

Bourdeaux, the former U.S. House member, said her worries go deeper. She still harbors hope Democrats can win Georgia “just because so many moderate Republicans dislike him.” But she said that might not be enough.

“They need to vote for Biden. Maybe that happens organically, but I doubt it,” she said. “For Democrats to truly put the state in play, on their own merits, would take ferocious energy to raise the money, deliver the message and the field operations. And right now I’m not seeing it.”