A new poll shows that former President Donald Trump has an edge over President Biden in most of the battleground states that decided the 2020 election.
The poll, conducted by Bloomberg News and Morning Consult, also reveals that the presence of two independent candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, does not significantly alter the outcome of the race.
The poll surveyed registered voters in seven key states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Michigan. These states collectively have 78 electoral votes, and all of them except North Carolina were won by Biden in 2020 with narrow margins.
Biden defeated Trump in the Electoral College by 306 to 232, but a shift of less than 44,000 votes in three states could have changed the result.
According to the poll, Trump leads Biden by one to nine percentage points in six of the seven states, regardless of whether Kennedy and West are included as options.
The only state where Biden has a slight advantage is Michigan, where he and Trump are tied at 43% in a head-to-head matchup, and where he leads by one point (38% to 37%) when the independents are added.
The poll also shows that Kennedy and West, who are both prominent critics of the mainstream political parties, draw support from both Trump and Biden supporters in roughly equal proportions. In most states, Kennedy receives between 8% and 13% of the vote, while West gets between 1% and 2%. Neither of them has a significant impact on the overall balance of power between Trump and Biden.
{{/usCountry}}The poll also shows that Kennedy and West, who are both prominent critics of the mainstream political parties, draw support from both Trump and Biden supporters in roughly equal proportions. In most states, Kennedy receives between 8% and 13% of the vote, while West gets between 1% and 2%. Neither of them has a significant impact on the overall balance of power between Trump and Biden.
{{/usCountry}}The poll results are consistent with other recent surveys that indicate that Biden is losing ground in the states that matter most for his reelection. The New York Times and Siena College, as well as Emerson College, have also released polls this week that show Trump ahead of Biden in several battleground states.
The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll was conducted online from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7. It has a sample size of 800 in Arizona, 803 in Georgia, 700 in Michigan, 437 in Nevada, 702 in North Carolina, 805 in Pennsylvania and 675 in Wisconsin.
The margin of error ranges from plus-or-minus three percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, to plus-or-minus five percentage points in Nevada.