The battle between President Biden and former
President Trump is ramping up with the general
election for the
White House now underway. Biden and Trump both easily wrapped up their party’s nominations last month, but each candidate will face a long and difficult campaign in a rematch of the 2020 contest. In a race expected to be razor-tight, a handful of battleground states will likely determine the winner. Biden swept almost all of them on the way to his victory four years ago, but polls have mostly shown Trump in the lead in each of them so far. Here’s where polling stands in the seven battleground states:
Arizona was a key target for
Democrats to pick up in the 2020 presidential election, and Biden was able to successfully flip it narrowly by less than a percentage point. The state had not voted for a
Democratic presidential candidate since 1996. This year will similarly be a fierce contest for its 11 electoral votes as the only true battleground state on the U.S. southern border. A Gallup poll from February showed more Americans considered
immigration to be the most important issue facing the country than any other topic for the first time since 2019. Trump has maintained a lead in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ polling average of the state by a few points since October. He leads in the average by nearly 5 points and led by about as much in a poll from The Wall Street Journal released on Wednesday. The rapid growth of Hispanic voters was seen as key to putting Arizona in play for Democrats. But polling and election results indicating a rightward shift among this key demographic nationwide could create a challenge for Biden to hold on to the state in 2024. Like with Arizona, Democrats received a welcome and long-awaited result in Georgia in 2020 when Biden flipped the state blue for the first time since 1992. He carried it by the closest margin of any state that year, winning by just over two tenths of a point. Trump is ahead by 5 points in the state’s polling average from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, and has been regularly leading in polls taken of the state. The most recent ones, however, have shown his lead within or close to the margin of error. Trump led by 3 points, 51 percent to 48 percent, among likely voters in a YouGov/CBS News poll last month, but the margin of error was 3.9 points. He led by 4 points in another poll from Emerson College Polling/The Hill with a margin of error of 3 points. But Trump’s lead widened to 7 points when third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein were included. Rallying Black voters was critical to Biden taking the state’s 16 electoral votes, but polls have shown him not performing as well with the demographic this cycle. The CBS poll showed 17 percent of Black voters choosing Trump, an improvement from his performance with the group four years earlier. Biden’s campaign has stepped up efforts to reach Black voters and other voters of color to keep this key part of their coalition, but the current numbers indicate that the campaign has work to do. The Great Lakes State was a part of the “blue wall” of midwestern states that had been reliably Democratic in the presidential race before voting for Trump in 2016. Biden then won it back in 2020 by a small but decent margin, taking it by nearly 3 points. Connecting with union workers and auto workers and minority groups was Biden’s key strategy to win the state. But his path to securing Michigan’s 16 electoral votes has become more complex this time. Trump leads by about 4 points in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average. He received a key endorsement from United Auto Workers but still must win over union members dealing with inflation affecting their cost of living and at least some of whom are not enthusiastic about his electric vehicle policies. Biden also is struggling with Arab
American voters frustrated with the administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas, and his approval rating among this demographic plunged in the weeks following the outbreak of the war in October. Michigan has one of the largest populations with ancestry in the
Middle East and North Africa in the country, greater than his margin of victory in the state in 2020. But some of the recent polls may indicate some added hope for Biden here. Biden and Trump were almost tied when undecided voters were required to choose in an Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll from last month, and they were tied in a North Star Opinion Research poll from February. Nevada has consistently voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 2008, but it has been especially close in both 2016 and 2020. Biden won it last time with just over a majority of the vote. Trump has been leading the state in polls but mostly by the low-to-mid single digits. He was up by just 2 points in a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from last month, and he led by 3 points in an Emerson College Polling/KLAS-TV/The Hill poll. Trump leads in the polling average from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ by just under 4 points. Like in Arizona, Biden owes a certain amount of his victory in Nevada to support among Latino voters. Democrats’ ability to hold off
Republican attempts to gain with this group will be key to Biden keeping the state in his column. The Emerson poll had Biden leading among Hispanic voters by 5 points, 44 percent to 39 percent. The Tarheel State has been a story of “close but no cigar” on the presidential level for Democrats. The party has fallen just short of winning the state’s electoral votes three cycles in a row since
Barack Obama won it in 2008. But it is a key battleground again and will likely be Biden’s best chance to flip a state he lost in 2020. Trump was leading in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ polling average by a sizeable margin for the first few months of 2024, reaching 10 points at one time, but Biden has been closing the margin recently. It currently stands at about 5 points. Trump led by 3 points, within the margin of error, in a Marist College poll from last month, but he led by 6 points in the Journal poll from Wednesday. Strategists in October pointed to both the state’s Black and growing Latino population as key to getting Democrats across the finish line in North Carolina, with one saying he expects the focus on the state to be even more intense than in previous years.
Pennsylvania is the most electorally valuable state of the battlegrounds, offering 20 electoral votes to the candidate who wins it, and was a pivotal determinant of Trump’s victory in 2016 and Biden’s in 2020. A state that had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, the Keystone State surprised many observers in going red for Trump in 2016 by less than 50,000 votes. Biden was able to turn it back but only by just over 1 percentage point. Polling has been more optimistic recently for Biden in Pennsylvania than in many of the other states. Trump leads by just 1.3 points in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ polling average. Biden and Trump were tied in both a CNN/SRSS poll and a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from last month. Trump led by 3 in the Journal poll from Wednesday, while Biden led by 5 in a Susquehanna Polling & Research survey released last week. Other polls over the months have shown varying small leads for Trump and Biden, so the polling average has consistently shown a close race with neither candidate leading by more than a few points. Wisconsin was the closest state that Biden reclaimed in 2020 to rebuild the midwestern “blue wall,” only winning it by about 20,000 votes, but he is performing comparatively better there in current polling than in most of the other battleground states. Trump leads by 1.6 points in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average, a little bit less than the lead he has held since late January. The results of recent polling in the state have been regularly within the margin of error and shown each candidate slightly ahead at times. Wisconsin was the only state in the Journal poll where Biden was not trailing. He and Trump were tied at 46 percent in a head-to-head matchup, and he led by 3 points when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was included in a three-way race. The Biden campaign has emphasized that the election is still too far away to focus on polling, but Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should give them their biggest source of optimism at this point.