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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
Former President Donald Trump has moved ahead of President Joe Biden in four vitally important swing states, roughly a year ahead of the 2024 election, as his election campaign hits high gear and he continues to put distance between himself and the remaining GOP primary field.
According to a survey of registered voters conducted late last week by The New York Times and Siena College, Trump is leading Biden in Nevada 52-41 percent after Biden narrowly won the state in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump also leads Biden in Georgia 49-43 percent.
“Trump leads Biden in Arizona, too, with 49% to the president’s 44%. In Michigan, Trump holds a 5-point lead as well: 48% to Biden’s 43%,” CNN reported, citing the survey.
The former president is also leading Biden in Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2016 but lost in 2020, by a 4-point margin, 48-44 percent. Trump trails Biden in Wisconsin, however, 47-45 percent.
The outlet noted further:
The latest battleground state polling underscores the considerable challenges facing Biden’s reelection bid, including low job approval ratings and questions about his age and ability to steer the country. The poll results are especially striking for Biden, given Trump’s mounting legal troubles. The former president faces 91 criminal charges across four indictments. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz downplayed the polling in a statement Sunday, telling CNN: “Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later.”
“Coming off those historic 2022 midterms, President Biden’s campaign is hard at work reaching and mobilizing our diverse, winning coalition of voters one year out on the choice between our winning, popular agenda and MAGA Republicans’ unpopular extremism. We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll,” Munoz added.
Still, Biden appears to have a hill to climb that gets steeper by the month. One voter in Pennsylvania told The Times: “The world is falling apart under Biden.”
“I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role model for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him,” the voter added.
All said, however, Trump does face challenges of his own: He has been indicted in four separate cases and is currently set to testify in a civil fraud trial on Monday in Manhattan regarding a lawsuit filed by Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, who vowed to ‘get’ him during her 2018 campaign.
He also faces more state charges in New York as well as federal charges related to the 2020 election in Washington, D.C., and his possession of classified documents in Florida. Biden is also under special counsel investigation for his retention of classified documents from his days as vice president and a U.S. senator, though that probe has largely remained out of the public’s eye.
Fox News adds:
The polling attributes Biden’s poor showing to a devastating lack of confidence due to his age. Voters said they trusted Trump to better handle the economy, foreign policy, and immigration.
Trump’s performance also came thanks to unprecedented levels of support from black voters, with a record 22% of the demographic siding with him over Biden across the six states, according to the NYT.
Trump currently holds a commanding lead in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, with his closest competitors dozens of points below him.
“The Outlaws” podcast co-host Darvio Morrow took to the X platform to note that, according to the polling data, Trump got 22 percent of the black vote in the poll.
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“Black voters—long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden—are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times,” he quoted the Times as saying.
“In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six,” the Times added.
“A BRUTAL poll for Biden,” Morrow wrote in the post. “You’d have to go back to Richard Nixon in 1960 to see the last time a National Republican got anywhere close to those numbers with Black voters. Brutal, brutal poll. And if Team Trump are serious about locking these numbers in and making them stick, put policy on the table for Black voters and make sure you go out and campaign for every single Black vote.”