Joe Biden
Democratic
presidential nominee Joe Biden has faced pressure from President Donald Trump for
additional debates. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
2020
ELECTIONS
Post-convention polls show Biden still in command
A spate of new national and battleground-state polling
shows the race has changed little after the back-to-back party conventions.
By STEVEN
SHEPARD
09/02/2020
09:47 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/joe-biden-post-dnc-polls-408087
President
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have emerged from the national party conventions
roughly where they were before: with Biden holding a significant lead, though
his advantage is far from secure.
A glut of
new national and state polling out since the Republican National Convention
ended last week shows either a small bump for Trump or no bounce at all. The
net result: Biden still holds a high-single-digit lead nationally, along with a
smaller-but-consistent advantage in the battleground states. Biden’s lead over
Trump is large in some swing-state polls, while others show Trump still behind
but within striking distance.
The new
polls reflect not only the parties’ conventions but the Trump campaign’s
efforts to focus the campaign on crime and justice and away from the
coronavirus pandemic. But the surveys show that Trump’s “law and order” posture
isn’t currently a winning issue for the president — though his poll numbers on
that issue are stronger than his poor ratings for handling the government’s
response to the virus.
Trump still
trails nationally
Wednesday
brought four new national polls conducted by live interviewers, and the results
were fairly consistent: Biden, hovering around 50 percent, held leads of 7 to
10 percentage points lead in all four surveys, while Trump was mired in the low
40s.
In a
Grinnell College poll, conducted by prominent Iowa pollster Selzer & Co.,
Biden led, 49 percent to 41 percent. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll had
Biden ahead, 50 percent to 43 percent. Biden’s lead was largest in a Quinnipiac
University poll, 52 percent to 42 percent. Finally, a CNN/SSRS poll showed
Biden leading, 51 percent to 43 percent.
It is not a
national election — but even though Trump assembled a coalition in 2016 that
allowed him to win the Electoral College without winning the popular vote,
Trump still needs to cut his national deficit at least in half over the final
two months to have more than a slim chance to win another term.
A
convention bounce he could ride into September would’ve helped — but the trend
lines are mixed, at best. Trump’s 8-point deficit in the CNN/SSRS poll is
greater than the 4-point margin by which he trailed in their preconvention
polling. In two other polls, Trump did cut into the margin, though the previous
USA Today/Suffolk poll (Biden +12) was in late June, and the most recent
Quinnipiac poll, in July (Biden +15), was conducted among registered voters and
not directly comparable to the new survey among likely voters.
Some states
polls show Trump in the hunt, but Biden has big leads in others
It’s a
similar story in the core battleground states most likely to tip the Electoral
College majority: Biden leads across the board — but by varying margins — in
the new polls out Wednesday.
A Monmouth
University poll in Pennsylvania showed a much narrower advantage for Biden — 1
to 3 points depending on the likely voter model used to evaluate the results.
It was a result that suggested Trump could again follow his 2016 path to an
unlikely victory.
New Fox
News surveys showed the former vice president ahead by 9 points among likely
voters in Arizona, 4 points in North Carolina and 8 points in Wisconsin. Trump
won all three states in 2016, and flipping them while maintaining all of Hillary
Clinton's 2016 wins would leave Biden needing just one more state to win the
White House.
The Arizona
result was eye-popping and doesn't match other public surveys there, which show
a closer race. And there is some post-convention polling that is better for
Trump: An East Carolina University poll conducted over the past weekend using
automated calls to landline phones and an online panel and released on Tuesday,
showed the president ahead by 2 points in North Carolina. And a WSB-TV/Landmark
Communications poll in Georgia — a burgeoning swing state, but not at the
center of the electoral battlefield — showed Trump leading there, 48 percent to
41 percent.
Not much
has changed
Poll
averages and forecast models are imperfect, but they provide an instructive look
at the relative change in the race over time. Right now, the candidates look
like they’re running in place.
Biden held
a 72 percent chance of victory in FiveThirtyEight’s forecast model on Aug. 17,
the date of the start of the Democratic convention. The model pegged Biden’s
chances at 70 percent as of Wednesday night.
Meanwhile,
Biden led Trump in the national RealClearPolitics average by 7.7 points on Aug.
17. By Wednesday night, the race was only a half-point closer: 7.2 points.
Both
aggregate metrics suggest Trump — despite his campaign’s claims of momentum —
has done little to narrow the race over the past two weeks and remains the
underdog.
Crime
doesn’t pay for Trump
Trump’s
attempts to shift the conversation toward crime and civil unrest in some of
America’s cities were obvious during last year’s convention — and have only
intensified in the week since it ended.
But while
it brings into focus an issue better for Trump than the coronavirus, it isn’t
an automatic political winner. In the CNN/SSRS poll, voters actually chose
Biden over Trump to keep Americans safe from harm by a 6-point margin, and
preferred Biden by a 7-point margin on handling the criminal-justice system.
That matched a similar finding in this week’s POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, in
which more respondents thought Biden would do a better job handling “public
safety” than Trump.
The state
polls put it in starker relief. Coronavirus is a political loser for Trump: He
trails Biden on who would better handle the virus by 17 points in Arizona and
Wisconsin, and by 9 points in North Carolina.
The recent
focus on violence in U.S. cities is better political terrain for Trump, the
polls show — but it’s not likely to be rocket fuel for his flagging campaign.
The
president trails Biden by 5 points on who would better handle policing and
criminal justice in Arizona and Wisconsin, and he leads Biden by just a single
point on the issue in North Carolina.
What’s
next?
With the
conventions in the books, the next (scheduled) possible inflection point in the
race is the first debate in Cleveland, which is a little less than four weeks
away.
Trump has
both applied pressure for additional debates and also lowered expectations for
Biden’s performance, suggesting the former vice president is too feeble-minded
to meet him on the stage on Sept. 28.
So what do
voters expect? The USA Today/Suffolk University poll asked respondents who they
think will win the three debates between Trump and Biden: Despite Biden’s
overall advantage on the ballot test, 47 percent picked the incumbent to win
the debates, and 41 percent chose the challenger.
More than
9-in-10 Trump supporters, 91 percent, think he will win the debate — but only
78 percent of Biden voters think the Democrat will win the debates.
2020
ELECTIONS
Joe and Jill Biden to visit Kenosha on Thursday
Biden will hold a community meeting in Kenosha,
according to the campaign.
By NATASHA
KORECKI
09/02/2020
11:16 AM EDT
Updated:
09/02/2020 12:06 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/joe-jill-biden-to-visit-kenosha-407726
Joe Biden
and his wife, Jill Biden, head to Kenosha, Wis., on Thursday, after President
Donald Trump toured wreckage there after days of riots and protests in the
battleground state.
Biden will
hold a community meeting in Kenosha “to bring together Americans to heal and
address the challenges we face,” according to the campaign. The two will also
make a local stop.
On Tuesday,
Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed verbally in
Kenosha’s downtown, with some getting into heated shouting matches. But the
clashes did not result in violence, as some had feared. Gov. Tony Evers had
sent Trump a letter asking him not to visit Kenosha and risk inflaming
tensions.
Democrats
have been critical of Biden for not having visited the state sooner, and some
feared the recent unrest would boost Trump if Biden didn’t take a tough stand
against violence that came after the unrest. Biden has denounced the violence
last week but took a more pronounced stand on Monday, with a full-throated
rebuke of those behind looting and mayhem in cities like Kenosha and Portland,
Ore.
Biden has
not visited Wisconsin since 2018, an absence that’s drawn criticism from Trump
and Republicans. The Democratic National Convention was to be held in Milwaukee
as a testament to the party’s commitment to a state that Hillary Clinton
skipped during the 2016 general election campaign and Trump won by fewer than
23,000 votes. But after Covid-19 hit, the convention was pared down to almost
nothing in the city, with everything moved to a virtual format, and Biden even
moved his acceptance speech to a venue near his home in Wilmington, Del.
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