Former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in a series of recent battleground state polls and national surveys, indicating his continued political resilience despite a summer of criminal indictments as voters remain lukewarm on the current administration.
Trump is ahead of Biden in key swing states by anywhere from 1 point to 9 points, and the former president is leading from 1 point to 10 points nationally, according to numerous recent surveys. Polling analysts argued to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the surveys appear to be trending in Trump’s favor, with some cautioning that it is still too early in the election season to be predictive.
“[Trump] can absolutely win a general election, that has always been true, and his odds get better every day Joe Biden is president,” Nathan Klein, pollster for OnMessage Inc., told the DCNF. “The positive movement for Trump we’ve been seeing in the presidential race seems real. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Trump has an outright advantage yet, as many of the swing state polling leads are within the margin of error. But Trump certainly is experiencing a bump, helped by some political environment factors and the current perception of the incumbent President. Nearly 70 percent of Americans feel like our country is on the wrong track, and Biden’s approval rating sits around just 40 percent.”
Across the states with the narrowest margins of victory in 2020 — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Trump is leading Biden 41 percent to 35 percent, according to a mid-September Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Trump is leading Biden by 2 points in Pennsylvania, which was crucial in deciding the 2020 election, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday. The former president also beat Biden 48 percent to 39 percent among independent voters.
In Georgia, Trump is ahead of Biden 47 percent to 38 percent, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released on Sept. 15. The former president is also beating Biden in North Carolina by 4 points, a near 3-point gain from when Trump won the state in 2020.
“It’s important to remember that Trump only lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by about 40,000 votes combined. So, the assumption that Biden would cruise to re-election if Trump becomes the nominee was flawed from the start,” said Klein. “That aside, Biden’s numbers have been dropping recently across the board. Crime, immigration, and his rampant mismanagement of crisis after crisis have all combined to sour his standing with Americans, which has begun to show in his polling numbers. Today, around 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration, the highest we’ve seen throughout his presidency.”
Trump would beat Biden 47 percent to 43 percent in a national head-to-head matchup, and the former president is advantaged more with third-party candidates in the mix, according to a late September McLaughlin & Associates survey.
“Trump is running to win the presidency and we have to beat Joe Biden. And our opponents are running a campaign in the primary trying to say we cannot beat Joe Biden, and that’s been proven false,” John McLaughlin, CEO and partner of McLaughlin & Associates, which works closely with the Trump campaign, told the DCNF. “These are not just our polls, but these are lots of media polls, and some of them are not as favorable to Republicans when they don’t really reflect the actual voter turnout. But still, we’re doing well in those polls.”
A Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday suggests Trump is leading Biden 51 percent to 48 percent among registered voters. The for
