Washington DC [US]: Former US President Donald Trump is ahead of US President Joe Biden in five of the six most important battleground states one year prior to the 2024 elections, according to the new polls conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.
According to the poll results, Biden is losing to Trump by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, The New York Times reported.
US President Joe Biden is ahead of Trump only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll revealed.
Biden trails by an average of 48 to 44 per cent across the six battlegrounds, all of which he had carried in 2020. During the survey conducted by Times/Siena, most of the voters said Biden’s policies have personnel hurt them.
Significantly, according to the poll, the extent of the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Biden is fraying.
Demographic groups that supported Joe Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the voters see the US moving in the wrong direction, it added.
Voters aged below 30 years support Biden by only a single percentage point while his lead among Hispanic voters has reduced to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Trump’s edge in rural areas, according to The New York Times report.
Further, according to the poll, women still support Biden while men back Trump by twice as large as margin.
Trump leads by six points in Nevada, Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Biden leads by two points in Wisconsin.
However, Biden and Trump are both deeply and similarly unpopular, according to the poll.
Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, who backed Biden in 2020, and is now supporting Trump, albeit with some reservations, said, “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.”
“The world is falling apart under Biden,” Weiss added.
The poll projected Biden to start the next year at a deficit while Trump, who has been indicted on criminal charges four times, faces trial in 2024. If the results in the polls are the same in 2024, Trump will be poised to win over 300 electoral college votes.
During the survey, voters across all income levels said that Biden’s policies had hurt them personally. They hailed Trump’s policies for helping them. Voters gave Mr. Trump a 17-point advantage for having helped them and Biden an 18-point disadvantage for having hurt them.
Significantly, 71 per cent of voters said Biden was “too old” to be an effective president. The opinion was shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 per cent of Biden’s own supporters.
Meanwhile, only 19 per cent of Trump’s supporters considered him too old and 39 per cent of the total voters.
As many as 62 per cent of the voters said Biden does not have the “mental sharpness” to be effective. Voters, by a 59 per cent to 37 per cent margin, said they trusted Trump over Biden on the economy, The New York Times reported.
Voters under the age of 30, a group that voted for Biden in 2020, said they trusted Trump more on the economy by an extraordinary 28 percentage-point margin after years of inflation and now high interest rates.
Less than one per cent of poll respondents under 30 rated the current economy as excellent.
On immigration, voters chose Trump over Biden by 12 points while voters on national security preferred Trump over Biden by 12 points.
The respondents said they preferred Trump over Biden on the Israel-Hamas conflict by 11 points. Voters trusted Biden over Trump over abortion by nine percentage points.
Only 46 per cent of voters said Biden had the proper temperament to be president while 43 per cent backed Trump. The polls by The New York Times/Siena College were conducted among 3,662 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from October 22 to November 3, 2023.
