Donald Trump to return to Atlanta on Monday

Former President Donald Trump is again returning to Atlanta with a rally on Monday, the latest sign his campaign is increasingly focused on turning out voters in the densely populated metro region in the closing days of his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Republican will headline a rally in Atlanta at 6 p.m. Monday, just eight days before the November election. No further details about the venue were immediately available.

It will be Trump’s third visit to metro Atlanta in three weeks, after rallies in Cobb and Gwinnett counties earlier this month. His running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, is also set to hold an event Saturday in downtown Atlanta.

Trump’s focus on vote-rich metro Atlanta marks a shift from his previous campaign strategy. In 2020, Trump mostly focused on rural parts of Georgia at this stage in the race, when he held giant rallies at airfields outside of Rome and Macon shortly before the vote.

Harris, like most other Democrats, has long centered her campaign on the deep-blue metro region. Her latest event took place Thursday in Clarkston, where she joined with former President Barack Obama at a rally headlined by rock legend Bruce Springsteen.

There’s a strategic reason both campaigns are narrowing their attention on metro Atlanta, which accounts for roughly half the state’s population. Even though 2.1 million early votes have already been tallied, there are millions of votes in the area for both campaigns to mine.

Polls show a tight race between Harris and Trump, who appeared to inch to a slight lead over his Democratic opponent in the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey of likely voters that published earlier this week. And both rivals are expected to make more visits to the state, which narrowly voted Democratic in 2020.