More voters in five key states say they would vote for former President Donald Trump (R) over President Joe Biden (D) in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, according to New York Times/Siena College Polls released on Sunday.
Trump, the unrivaled favorite in the Republican Party primaries to face Biden, leads Biden between 52% and 41% in Nevada, between 49% and 43% in Georgia, between 49% and 44% in Arizona, between 48% and 43% in Michigan. and from 48% to 44% in Pennsylvania.
Wisconsin is the only swing state polled by The New York Times and Siena College where Biden has a lead. In the Badger State, Biden leads Trump by 47% to 45%.
The results of the polls, which were conducted from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3, are perhaps the most alarming sign yet for Democrats that Biden faces an uphill battle in his bid for a second term. If Trump were to win by margins in polls released Sunday, he would get more than 300 electoral college votes and easily win the presidential election.
Biden’s campaign notes that a Gallup poll predicted former President Barack Obama would lose a year before his re-election in 2012, and that polls predicted a much worse showing for Democrats in the 2022 midterms than they ended up getting.
“After those historic midterm elections, President Biden’s campaign is working hard to reach and mobilize our diverse and winning coalition of voters, one year later, to choose between our winning popular agenda and the unpopular extremism of MAGA Republicans,” said Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Muñoz in a sentence. «We will win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not worrying about a poll.»
The two main reasons voters are abandoning Biden in the battleground states that gave him the presidency in 2020 are concern about his age and mental acuity, and dissatisfaction with the state of the economy, according the surveys.
By a margin of 59% to 37%, voters in all six states said they “trust” Trump to do a better job than Biden in managing the economy.
Those voters believe Biden is “too old” to be president by an even larger margin: 71% to 27%. Only 39% of those voters believe Trump is “too old,” compared to 59% who don’t.
In an interview on CNN’s «State of the Union» Sunday morning, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed concern about the poll results but supported Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
“I was worried before these polls and I am worried now. “These presidential races over the last two terms have been very close,” he said. “No one is going to have a runaway election here. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, focus and resources. And that’s why we have a lot of work ahead of us.»
