An NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday showed President Donald Trump struggling with key voting blocs ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The president’s standing among voter groups that carried him to victory in 2016 appears to have eroded. In 2016, when he ran against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , Trump won voters without a college degree by eight percentage points, while Clinton won those with a degree by nine points.
Trump fares much worse against former Vice President Joe Biden , the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee. Trump is trailing Biden by 24 points among voters with a college degree. Among those who do not have a degree, the president is ahead of Biden by only three percentage points.
Similarly, the poll showed that Trump’s standing with women has worsened. Trump lost support from women to Clinton by around 12 points. In this demographic group, Biden’s advantage is 21 points. Furthermore, in 2016, the president won men by 12 points. His edge has been reduced to eight points.
White voters carried Trump to the White House in 2016 and won by 21 percentage points. Biden has managed to reduce the lead to just six points. Versus Biden, Trump does slightly better with African-American and Hispanic voters than he did versus Clinton, but the former vice president still has an enormous advantage when it comes to those two demographic groups.
Biden’s overall nationwide lead is seven percentage points. As NBC News noted, this makes it virtually impossible for Trump to win the popular vote — which he lost by only two points in 2016 — and means that winning the Electoral College will be much harder for him than four years ago.
“Comparing the new survey data to the numbers from the 2016 election exit poll shows Trump has lost ground with a wide range of demographic groups measured by educational attainment, gender and race. These are numbers he’ll need to address if he wants to be re-elected.”
Nevertheless, as the publication concluded, a lot could change in the coming months.
“In a year marked by everything from a pandemic to protests across the country, there are almost certainly going to be more twists and turns to come. But the numbers here indicate that as of early June, the president has a lot of work to do with a lot of different kinds of voters if he wants to be re-elected,” NBC News wrote.
Polling suggests that Biden is pulling ahead of Trump both nationwide and in battleground states, which appears to have alarmed the president and his allies. Earlier this week, Trump reportedly held an emergency meeting with members of his campaign and top political advisers, discussing strategy for the 2020 election.