New Poll Shows Biden Taking Wide Lead in Six Key Battleground States

Can Trump manage to win the Electoral College with even fewer votes this time?

NICHOLAS KAMM/Getty Images

Yesterday, we learned the country is not very happy with President Donald Trump at the moment as new polling showed him trailing Joe Biden by 14 points. National polls are a good generalized mood barometer, but, as we all now know from our experience four eons ago in 2016, the national mood doesn’t necessarily translate into Electoral College W’s. On Thursday, however, we learned that a repeat of Trump’s electoral strategy of winning over a couple thousand white voters in key Rust Belt swing states is also looking like a grim proposition. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Thursday shows Trump trailing badly in six key battleground states, all states he carried four years ago. In the three states that proved vital to Trump whisking the presidency away from Hillary Clinton—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—Trump is trailing Biden by double-digits in each. Even worse for Trump is that he is now behind by significant margins in Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina, three states he won by close but more comfortable margins last time out.

Without the three midwestern states, each of which Trump carried by a fraction of a point, Trump would not be president today. Trump likely needs to win all three states in November, but his support has dipped since October of last year when the same poll had Biden up by just an average of two points across the same six battleground states. Trump is now trailing Biden among white voters (though narrowly) in these three states after riding a 10-point lead in that demographic to the presidency in 2016.

“Overall in the six states, Mr. Biden holds a 55-34 lead among white voters with at least a four-year college degree, an 11-point gain from October. White voters under age 35 now back Mr. Biden by a margin of 50 percent to 31 percent, up from an all-but-tied race in October,” the New York Times notes. “White voters with more conservative attitudes on racial issues appear to have soured on Mr. Trump in recent months, and yet they have not embraced Mr. Biden.”

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/31cRyot
via IFTTT