Politico reports:

Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states.

Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The challenge for Trump: 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.

Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris this week visited Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden won by just 11,779 votes in 2020. Georgia and North Carolina each have 16 electoral votes, and polls show that Trump is leading Harris by about 1 percentage point in each state, well within the margin of error. [Continue reading…]