For the 33rd time in 35 polls released since he announced his run for president in the 2020 election , Democrat Joe Biden has topped Donald Trump in a nationwide, head-to-head poll. But the new poll taken by Survey USA contains perhaps the worst news for Trump so far.
The poll shows Biden easily defeating Trump in a head-to-head match by a gaping 13-point margin, 52-39. In an average of all head-to-head Trump vs. Biden polls, compiled by Real Clear Politics , Biden leads Trump by 9.9 points.
By contrast, over the same time period in the 2012 election, then-incumbent President Barack Obama led Republican frontrunner, and eventual nominee, Mitt Romney by just 1.3 points. Obama ended up winning that election by 3.9 percentage points.
But the most important finding in the Survey USA poll released on November 27 reveals that, at least according to the single poll, Trump’s support among his “base” of white voters is very much at risk if he winds up in a head-to-head matchup with Biden.
The poll may help explain why Trump has appeared so obsessed with Biden that he has attempted to force the government of Ukraine to announce a bogus “investigation” into the former United States vice president. That attempt by Trump is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry against him.
In 2016, Trump won the election over Democrat Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million. But a combined total of 77,744 votes across three key “swing” states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — gave Trump razor-thin victories in those three states, giving him enough electoral votes to win the election via the Electoral College.
The base of Trump’s victory was the white vote. Trump won 58 percent of white voters in 2016, compared to just 37 percent for Clinton, according to a retrospective by Vox .
But in the Survey USA poll, Trump wins only 47 percent of white voters, compared to 45 percent for Biden — an almost even split. The numbers in the poll suggest that if he is matched against Biden, the white voters whose support gave Trump the 2016 victory will slip away, becoming a strength for Biden.
At the same time, Biden crushed Trump among non-white voters. Only six percent of black voters said they would support Trump in the poll, with 84 percent backing Biden. Hispanic voters show a higher level of support for Trump at 31 percent and 60 percent say that they back Biden.
Another key voting bloc for Trump in 2016 was upper-income voters. But those wealthy voters now back Biden by a seven-point margin in the latest Survey USA poll, even though all previous polls by the same research firm showed Trump leading the Democratic frontrunner.