Former President Donald Trump has managed to retake the lead from President Joe Biden in a very important swing state he won in 2016 but narrowly lost in 2020. A new Marist College survey found that Trump is now leading Biden in Pennsylvania, both among “registered voters” and “likely voters.”
The poll found that Trump was leading Biden among registered voters by a 47-45 percent margin. Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. polled at 3% in the survey, with Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Cornel West each at 1%, and 2% were undecided. In the smaller pool of likely presidential election voters, the presumptive Republican nominee maintains a 48%-46% lead over his Democratic counterpart in the White House in a multi-candidate field.
In 2016, Trump became the first Republican in nearly three decades to win Pennsylvania, which is part of the Democrats’ blue wall of Northeastern and Midwestern states. He won the state by a razor-thin margin in his victory over Hillary Clinton. However, in the 2020 election, Biden narrowly won his native state, helping him defeat Trump and win the presidency, Fox News reported.
The latest poll conducted by Marist from June 3-6 raises concerns about Biden’s support within certain segments of the Democratic Party’s base. “While still strong, Biden has lost his formidable support among Black voters. 68% break for Biden to 23% for Trump. Biden handily won the support of most Black voters in the 2020 presidential election, 92% to 7% for Trump,” the poll’s release points out.
According to the poll, there has been a significant increase in support for Trump among voters under 45 in Pennsylvania. Four years ago, Biden had a 24-point lead in this group, but the recent survey suggests that Biden’s lead over Trump has narrowed to just two points. However, the survey also noted that “Trump’s advantage among older voters has evaporated. He carried voters 45 or older by 12 percentage points in 2020. Now, three percentage points separate Trump (48%) and Biden (45%) among this group.”
Despite Trump holding the edge over Biden in the latest polls in most of the key swing states and his fundraising surging after his recent conviction in the first criminal trial of a current or former president, Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) are currently facing a significant deficit compared to the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in grassroots outreach and get-out-the-vote efforts, Fox added, noting that the Trump campaign and the RNC just opened their first campaign office in Pennsylvania this week.
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