Joe Biden is losing ground after the Democrat convention failed to produce a bump and the Republican convention gave President Donald Trump a big boost. In several polls, Trump is gaining ground on challenger Joe Biden in six swing states, a CNBC/Change Research found this week.
Although the boost still leaves Biden leading Trump by 49 percent to 46 percent across the six states, 48 percent of voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin approve of the job Trump is doing and 52 percent disapprove, an improvement for the president over the 46 percent who approved and 54 percent who disapproved two weeks earlier.
When polls, which traditionally oversample Democrats and under sample Republicans are more evenly divided, Biden’s support shrinks. Independents and Republicans currently favor Trump in the 2020 race.
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Other polls released this week show that the President’s approval overall across the nation, by one account, at 52 percent.
Sixty-six percent of likely voters in the swing states said they have serious concerns about the coronavirus, down three percentage points from a poll taken two weeks ago. Additionally, while 49 percent of respondents said they had “very serious” concerns about the coronavirus in that previous poll, that number has dropped to 45 percent.
The president’s COVID-19 approval rating rose to 47 percent, the highest since mid-May and an increase of three percentage points this month. The news comes as new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have steadily fallen in the United States. after many states were forced to pause or roll back their reopenings as cases spiked this summer.
The United States has had more coronavirus cases, more than 5.7 million, and more deaths — at least 178,000 — than any other country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The poll found that swing state voters, by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin, believe Biden and Democrats would handle the coronavirus more capably than Trump and Republicans.
The CNBC/Change Research poll surveyed 4,904 people across the six battleground states from Friday through Sunday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice