Top Line
The outcome of the presidential election will likely hinge on six purple states that President Joe Biden won in 2020, but he is trailing former President Donald Trump in all of them with less than six months until the November general election, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
President Joe Biden Speaks About Plans to Invest in America at Gateway Technical College … [+]
Key Facts
Arizona: Trump has a 5.7-point lead, up 1.7 points since early June, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, which shows him ahead of Biden (who won the state by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020) in all six polls taken since June 11.
Georgia: Trump’s approval rating in the state has risen by 3.9 points, while the former president’s approval rating has fallen by almost a point over the past six weeks, though all five polls in the Real Clear Politics polling average (as of May 30) show Trump winning by at least 3 points.
Michigan: An average of six polls going back to June 21 shows Trump leading by a slim 1.3 percentage point margin in battleground states here, with only one showing Biden winning (Biden won Michigan in 2020).
Nevada: Biden also won the state by 3 points in 2020, but polls this year show Biden winning by 5 points, with an average of six polls going back to June 1 all pointing to a Trump victory.
Pennsylvania: After Biden won the state by one point in 2020, reversing Trump’s 2016 victory, Trump holds an average lead of 4.5 points and has led in all six polls since June 27 that are included in the Real Clear Politics polling average.
Wisconsin: A Real Clear Politics average of six polls going back to June 28th shows Trump winning here by three points, with five of them showing him winning. (After Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, Biden beat Trump by less than a point in 2020.)
Big numbers
77. That’s the total number of electoral votes received by the six battleground states out of the 270 needed to win the presidential election.
Amazing facts
Virginia has become a surprising battleground state in this year’s election, with a New York Times/Siena poll conducted July 9-12 showing Biden, who beat Trump by 10 points in the state in 2020, winning by just 3 points.
Main Background
Trump opened up a slight lead over Biden after the June 27 debate. Most polls since then have shown Trump winning, with a growing number of people saying Biden is too old to serve another term. Trump now leads Biden in head-to-head contests by 2.7 percentage points, up 2 percentage points from early June, according to the Real Clear Politics average.
What we don’t know
How will the assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday affect Trump’s polling lead? A national Morning Consult poll conducted Monday among 2,045 registered voters found Trump leading by one point, down slightly from a July 12-14 poll in which Trump had a two-point lead. Thirty-eight percent of voters said Trump was to blame for the shooting, in which the former president was grazed by a bullet and one spectator was killed and two seriously injured.
Points to note
Assuming Trump’s polling leads in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada hold into November, Biden would need to win all three Rust Belt battleground states, plus a share of the electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska, which each have a proportional share of the electoral votes, to win the presidency. Biden’s poor polling performance in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada is widely seen as a sign of a loss of support among younger, Hispanic and black voters.
tangent
Trump and his associates have unsuccessfully tried to challenge the 2020 election results in six battleground states for fraud through trials and various schemes to overturn the results, leading to a series of indictments. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, indicted Trump and 18 others last August in a broad organized crime scheme to overturn the state’s election results. On Tuesday, Wisconsin’s attorney general also charged two lawyers and an aide with felony forgery for attempting to submit false documents to Congress to certify the state’s election results in Trump’s favor. In Arizona, a grand jury has indicted 18 people, including Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, in a scheme similar to the one allegedly attempted in Wisconsin.
References
Post-Trump Conviction Polls Show Warning Signs: Majority of Independents Think Trump Should Step Down (Forbes)
Biden vs. Trump 2024 Election Poll: Biden has slight lead in some polls after Trump’s conviction (Forbes)
Poll shows RFK Jr. will hurt Trump more than Biden (Forbes)
