According to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College former President Donald Trump is leading current President Joe Biden in five out of 6 of the most important battleground swing states. Specifically, the poll shows Biden losing to Trump by large margins between four to ten percentage points, among voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The sixth swing state Biden appears to be ahead in is Wisconsin, and that is only by two percentage points.
“Add it all together”, and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania.
The results are devastating to the Democratic Party because all six of the battleground states were ultimately won by Biden in the 2020 election. The polls show a majority of voters believe Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. Part of the issue for Biden’s lowering numbers is in part due to the demographic groups that widely supported Biden in 2020.
Voters under 30 years old favor Biden only by a single percentage point. His lead among Hispanic voters has dwindled down to single digits. The New York Times reports that Black voters “long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden – are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.”
“In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six” writes the Times.
59 percent to 37 percent of voters said they better trusted Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on the economy, the largest gap of any issue. Trump won on economic issues among both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, every age range and every income level.
Biden turns 81 later this month, and is the oldest president in American history. An overwhelming 71 percent said he was “too old” to be an effective president, including 54 percent of Biden’s own supporters. Only 19 percent of supporters of Trump, who is 77, viewed him as too old, and 39 percent of the electorate overall.
The Times quotes voters to give insight into the logic of voters. “I actually had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, a 25-year-old who packages liquor in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump. But then as the years go by, things happen with inflation, the war going on in Ukraine, recently Israel and I guess our borders are not secure at all.” Henry now plans to vote for Trump if those are the two 2024 options.
“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, Pa., who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but is now backing Mr. Trump, albeit with some reservations. “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”
