Joe Biden Trounces Donald Trump In Crucial Pennsylvania Race, Per ‘Morning Consult’ Poll, Also Leads Georgia
In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, turning the state “red” for the first time since the 1988 election. But according to a new poll released on Thursday, the Keystone State appears ready to flip back to “blue” in 2020. The poll conducted by Muhlenberg College and The Morning Call shows former United States Vice President Joe Biden cruising past Trump in the state by nine percentage points.
The Morning Call head-to-head poll shows Biden at 52 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, to just 43 percent for Trump. The poll also found that 57 percent of all registered voters in Pennsylvania say that Trump does not deserve another term in the Oval Office.
In more bad news for Trump in the state that he won by fewer than 70,000 votes (1.2 percent) in 2016, the new poll also showed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders both leading the president by a narrower but still comfortable five points each.
In a perhaps even more shocking result, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released on Wednesday revealed deep trouble for Trump in the Deep South state of Georgia.
Georgia has voted for the Republican candidate in eight of the last nine presidential elections, and the last six in a row. In 2016 Trump beat Clinton in Georgia by a comfortable 5.7 percentage points.
But according to the AJC poll, Trump has some serious catching up to do this time around. He trails Biden in Georgia, according to the head-to-head poll, by a full eight percentage points, 51-43.
The state-level polls are in line with the numerous national head-to-head polls pitting Trump directly against Biden. According to an average of all such polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, Biden leads the president by a whopping 10.2 points. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on November 4, the former vice president was ahead by a seemingly insurmountable 17 percentage points with voters nationwide.
Despite Biden’s consistent and sizable lead over Trump both nationally and in several key states, media coverage of the race has given the benefit of the doubt to Trump, according to media critic Eric Boehlert.
Bohelert cites one recent New York Times op-ed column asking the question, “why is he running?”
The article is headlined, “Does Joe Biden Want to be Doing This?”
The media critic compared the Biden vs. Trump 2020 race to the 2012 election in which Republican Mitt Romney opposed incumbent Democrat Barack Obama. Romney led Obama in only three of the first 19 head-to-head polls taken, more than one year in advance of the election. And yet, various media headlines warned that Obama was “losing ground,” and in a “shock poll slump,” while Romney had moved into “striking distance.”
