TOPLINE
Joe Biden has made significant inroads with white voters to open up a wide lead in the six battleground states that handed the election to Trump in 2016, a New York Times poll released Thursday shows, an encouraging sign for the former vice president who has led in national polls but saw his lead shrink in key swing states.
KEY FACTS
Biden has consistently topped Trump in national polls, and on Wednesday, the Times released a separate poll showing that Biden was ahead nationally by 14 points, 50% to 36%.
State-by-state polls have told a different story, leading some to believe that Biden could suffer the same fate as 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by a combined margin of around 77,000 votes, even while she won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
The Times poll, a survey of 3,870 registered voters from June 8 to June 18, found Biden improving significantly in six battleground states—Michigan (+11), Wisconsin (+11), Pennsylvania (+10), Florida (+6), Arizona (+7) and North Carolina (+9) in head-to-head matchups against Trump—from when the same polling was conducted by the Times in 2019, leading by at least 6 points in each state.
Biden has mounted a double-digit lead over Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania—but more impressive is his double-digit lead in Wisconsin, a state in which he has consistently polled poorly and the state that handed victory to Trump in 2016.
The former vice president’s polling improvement was buoyed by support from college-educated white voters, who now back him by a 21-point margin, and young voters ages 18 to 29, who support the Democratic nominee by a 38-point margin; overall, Trump’s advantage among white voters has all but vanished, with white voters now backing the president by just a 4-point margin.
Multiple polls have shown the president’s standing damaged in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the coronavirus pandemic, and the Times’ polling bears this out: 41% of battleground voters support the president’s response to the coronavirus, while just 31% of swing-state voters approve of Trump’s handling of the George Floyd protests.
What to watch for
Polling analysts caution that it is still way too early to reach a conclusion about the election outcome, especially given the volatility of the race as the U.S. battles two separate crises—civil unrest in the aftermath of Floyd’s death and the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief critic
Some Republican operatives and top Trump campaign officials are choosing to publicly discount Trump’s bad polling numbers. “I used to be an avid poll watcher until 2016 . . . Guess what? I’m not watching polls,” Jack Brill, a local Republican leader in Florida, told Politico.
Big number
333. Biden would win the presidency with at least 333 electoral votes, eclipsing the 270 threshold needed, if he won all six of the states the Times surveyed and held those won by Hillary Clinton four years ago.
Further reading
Showing Strength With White Voters, Biden Builds Lead in Battleground States (New York Times)
New Polls Show Trump Down By Double Digits As GOP Officials Insist Polls Are Meaningless (Forbes)
Trump’s Coronavirus Approval Rating Sinks To New Low As Cases Surge (Forbes)
Biden Takes Dominant Lead as Voters Reject Trump on Virus and Race (New York Times)
