Biden Leads in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado –

Democrat Joe Biden returns to the campaign trail: Screen shot

By Glynn Wilson –

Democrats should be able to issue a collective sigh of relief at least for a few minutes in the first week of September as the Democratic Party’s ticket for president, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, still holds an eight point lead nationally over Donald Trump and Mike Pence in the wake of both party’s national conventions, five points higher than where Hillary Clinton was against Trump four years ago, according to a new poll out from the Morning Consult.

The latest national survey of 12,966 likely voters from Aug. 28-30 found Biden 8 points ahead of Trump, 51 percent to 43 percent.

The Biden-Harris ticket was reportedly slightly further ahead of Trump after the Democratic National Convention and before the Republican National Convention, and Trump seemed to get a 2-4 point bump after the RNC was staged in controversy from the White House. But the daily tracking polls appear to have evened out a few days later.

“Daily tracking of the head-to-head contest showed a narrow improvement in Trump’s standing against Biden on Friday, the day after the Republican National Convention staged at the White House, but the bump didn’t last,” the Morning Consult says in the latest press release on the numbers. “That post-convention bump proved to be fleeting, with daily tracking on Saturday showing Trump trailing Biden 43 percent to 51 percent and Sunday’s responses putting Biden back to a 9-point lead and 52 percent of the vote.”

Some movement away from Biden and toward Trump was detected on Friday among white voters and suburbanites, but the feeling was “short-lived,” they say. “The three-day survey showed no significant national shifts among those groups.”

Saturday’s poll had a margin of error of only 2 percent, and Sunday’s poll came in with a margin of 1 percent.

55 Percent of Voters Don’t Like Trump

Voter sentiment about Trump is statistically unchanged since before the convention, it seems, with a healthy majority of 55 percent holding negative views of Trump. Somehow 43 percent still hold positive views, in spite of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and his continuing role in stirring up civil unrest rather than quelling it.

Virtual Convention Helps Biden

It appears the virtual convention did help the Biden-Harris ticket, and the RNC attacks from the White House seem to have missed their mark, not landing a significant blow with the American people.

A majority of voters in the latest national survey, 51 percent, hold positive views of Biden, up 3 points since before the two conventions. Another 46 percent view him unfavorably, down 2 points during the same time frame.

Clinton never got to 50 percent in the polls in 2016, and most of the polls remained well within the 3-4 point margin of error for much of the campaign.

This time voters are 11 points less likely to be undecided compared to 2016. Only 6 percent now say they are undecided, compared to 17 percent at this time in 2016. And in spite of the lack of enthusiasm among Bernie Sanders supporters for Biden on the political left on social media, only 2 percent of voters now say they’d choose “someone else” over either Biden or Trump.

Biden Leads in Wisconsin, Arizona

Amid the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon, Biden leads Trump by 9 points in Wisconsin, 52 to 43 percent, a state Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016.

Biden now holds an advantage over Trump among Wisconsin independents, 52 percent to 32 percent, and women, 54 percent to 40 percent, along with suburbanites, 54 percent to 40 percent.

The trend data also shows Biden’s standing with white voters in the Badger State virtually unchanged since before the conventions and the unrest in Kenosha, regardless of their level of education: 44 percent of white voters without a college degree prefer Biden compared with 49 percent who said they’d vote for Trump, and Biden continues to hold a large lead over Trump among college-educated whites, 59 percent to 38 percent.

Arizona

While Biden has been trailing Trump in the Southwestern battleground state of Arizona, by 2 percentage points before the Democratic National Convention, the former vice president has improved his margin over Trump by 12 points in that battleground state.

The results in the Grand Canyon State are the most surprising, and it looks like Biden may have a real shot at picking up Arizona in November.


According to the Aug. 21-30 survey of 943 likely Arizona voters, with a 3-point margin of error, Biden leads Trump 52 to 42 percent. This is driven mainly by a 10-point increase in support among Arizona men, statistically tying him with Trump, 49 percent to 45 percent.

It also includes a 7-point increase in support with suburbanites, who now favor Biden by 9 points, 51 percent to 42 percent. Biden also leads among women, 55 percent to 40 percent, and independents, 51 percent to 37 percent.

“Biden’s campaign has already spent millions in an effort to flip Arizona for the Democrats at the presidential level for the first time since 1996,” according to Morning Consult. “In the wake of the party’s national convention, the Delawarean received a high-profile endorsement on Aug. 24 from former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, an anti-Trump Republican who retired in 2018.” 

Other Battleground States

The Biden-Harris ticket has not shown the same uptick, however, in other key battle ground states.

In Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Biden’s lead over Trump falls within the surveys’ margins of error — statistically unchanged since before the conventions — while Trump holds a narrow lead, 50 percent to 45 percent, in Ohio. Biden continues to hold a sizable lead over Trump in Michigan, 52 percent to 42 percent, and in Colorado, 51 percent to 41 percent.