President Trump Leads In Polls In Only One Swing State As Election Nears
President Donald Trump is leading in the polls in only one so-called “swing state,” and even so, his lead there is razor-thin, Newsweek reported.
Among the handful of states where both parties have similar levels of support among voters, and whose electoral votes could thus “swing” the election to the eventual winning candidate, Trump only has a lead in the polls in Texas. The latest poll in the Lone Star State, which was released on Monday by polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight, has the incumbent president leading by only 1.5 percentage points, per Newsweek.
However, the polling picture in Texas is muddled by conflicting results from different surveys. In early October, polls conducted by YouGov and Pulse Opinion Research showed that Trump led by as much as between five and seven points, while a Civiqs survey had the president and his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, in a virtual tie.
Texas’ 38 electoral votes are a sought-after prize for both candidates, although no Democrat has won the state in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
In the other swing states, Biden clearly leads, albeit much more comfortably in some than in others.
According to FiveThirtyEight‘s state polling averages, Biden’s leads in other swing states as of Monday are as follows — in Arizona, Biden leads by 3.9 points; in Florida, by 4.5 points; in Michigan, by 8.1 points; North Carolina, by 2.9 points; Pennsylvania by 7.3 points; and Wisconsin by 7.7 points.
Meanwhile, Ohio remains something of a wild card. Its 18 electoral votes could be enough to swing the outcome of the election; only once in the past 76 years have voters in the Buckeye State picked the eventual losing candidate. According to the FiveThirtyEight average, the former vice president leads there by only 0.7 points, while other polls have put the two candidates in a virtual tie, or have even given Trump an edge of between two and four points.
Nationally, Biden leads Trump by 10.6 points — 52.5 percent to 41.9 percent. However, the national popular vote doesn’t actually determine the eventual winner of the election, as this falls on the Electoral College.
Politico crunched the numbers this week and concluded that Biden has multiple paths to getting the 270 electoral votes needed to claim victory, while Trump has virtually none.
According to the website’s analysis, Biden has a “floor” of 226 electoral votes — or the total of such votes that he is extremely likely to win. If he were to pick up Florida’s 29, he would be within 15 of the presidency and would need only Ohio, North Carolina, or the combination of Iowa and Arizona.
