It may be a matter of “considering the source,” but a new Rasmussen Reports poll of key battleground states shows that President Biden is poised to lose the ballot battle if he is still a candidate in November.
And if Biden falls, the data shows he will take Capitol Hill Democrats down with him.
Donald Trump’s favorite pollster surveyed 5,605 likely voters in key swing states from July 5 to 12, meaning the survey ended the day before a sniper attempted to kill him at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday.
The poll included 1,101 likely voters in Arizona, as well as 1,015 in Georgia, 1,025 in Michigan, 761 in Nevada, 1,041 in Pennsylvania and 1,020 in Wisconsin. 48% of respondents voted for Biden in 2020, and only 47% supported Trump’s re-election.
And it turns out that in these key states that will decide the Electoral College, everything is going in the direction of the Trump-Vance campaign.
It doesn’t matter whether the polls predict a two-person race or a narrow race: Trump is comfortably ahead in both. In the two-person battle, Trump leads Biden 49% to 44%.
And in the scenario with minor candidates, the lead is 6 points – 46% to 40%, with Robert Kennedy Jr. garnering 7% of the vote and no other candidate above 1% in the battlegrounds.
There are some differences between states.
Trump leads Biden by 8 points in Nevada, suggesting that state may be out of reach, but he has a more modest 4-point lead in Pennsylvania and 3-point lead in Wisconsin, two states that are absolutely crucial to Biden’s victory in November. Kennedy has his best showing in Georgia, where he gets 10 percent of the vote.
The trajectory of the race translates into attractive approval ratings for the major party candidates.
Both men are viewed very unfavorably by more than 40% of respondents, but Biden fares worse than the polarizing Trump: 45% to 41%. And the incumbent president also doesn’t inspire the same positive sentiment as Trump.
Overall, Trump is above average, with 50% approval and 49% disapproval. Biden, meanwhile, has 44% approval and 55% the other way.
And there are even more reasons to worry Joe Biden and his supporters in this data set.
With 64% of black voters in key states saying they support Biden in the two-way scenario, the incumbent is headed for heavy losses among Hispanics and whites.
Trump is at 52% among white voters and 54% among Hispanics, while Biden is at 41% and 37%, respectively.
Trump is tied with Biden among voters under 40, up 8 points among voters 41 to 64 and up 5 points among seniors.
Biden’s opposition to the election extends down the ballot.
Respondents are more likely to vote for Republicans in Congress than Democrats, 47% to 43%, a phenomenon that helps explain calls by more than 30 Democratic members of Congress for Biden to abandon his campaign.
They are simply not willing to give up what would otherwise be a competitive race for a totally flawed candidate, and the data here bears that out.
In Rasmussen’s state-by-state polls, all Democratic Senate candidates are ahead of Biden in this round.
Free-market think tank the Heartland Institute sponsored the poll and is pleased with its results.
“As this key-state poll shows, things couldn’t be looking better for the Trump campaign. There’s no doubt that voters in key states were horrified by President Biden’s performance in the debate in late June. That’s why things have changed so quickly. Currently, former President Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in key states, while his approval rating has reached 50%. Republicans also hold a solid lead in the down-ballot races, suggesting that 2024 could be a landslide victory for the GOP,” says Chris Talgo, Heartland’s editorial director.
For its part, the Biden campaign says it will continue to fight as another brutal week draws to a close.
“President Biden looks forward to returning to the campaign as soon as he is able,” read a memo from the campaign, which sent its second-in-command Doug Emhoff to Arizona this weekend to meet with Black voters before attending the WNBA All-Star Weekend Skills Challenge and 3-point contest.
While the president recovers from COVID, Trump and running mate JD Vance will hit the trails. They will hold a joint rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday, followed by another in Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Ohio, on Monday.
From there, they will continue to travel to key states separately. Vance will travel to Radford, Virginia, on Monday night. Trump plans an event Wednesday in Charlotte, North Carolina.
