Fresh surveys from Wisconsin and Michigan show that in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt, Donald Trump is leading President Biden in two of three “blue wall” states key to any re-election hope for the Delaware Democrat.
The polls, released Friday as part of a swath of Trafalgar Group battleground-state surveys, show the former president poised to win the 25 electoral votes at stake in November if current trends hold.
In Wisconsin, home of the just-concluded Republican National Convention, Trump leads Biden 46% to 43% among the 1,087 registered voters polled, with 7% undecided and the remaining voters going to Robert Kennedy (3%), Jill Stein (1%) and Cornel West and Libertarian Chase Oliver, who are each closer to no support than even Stein’s meager 1%.
The R+1.5 survey was conducted between July 15 and July 17, encompassing much of the RNC. It has a +/- 2.9% margin of error and accords with trends in Wisconsin polling since the sole debate between Trump and Biden in late June.
As FiveThirtyEight’s tracking shows, Biden was slightly ahead until recently on average in Badger State surveys, but Trump’s current lead is 2.5%.
Trafalgar’s Michigan survey of 1,091 registered voters was also conducted between Monday and Wednesday, and it’s also showing a close race but one where Trump is slightly ahead of Biden, 45% to 43% — a lead inside the margin of error of +/- 2.9% but aligned with the average lead of 2 points as tracked by FiveThirtyEight.
Kennedy is somewhat more of a factor in the Great Lake State than in Wisconsin, garnering 4% support. Stein and West are at 1%, and 5% of voters say they are undecided.
Biden has campaigned in Michigan fairly recently, holding a rally in Detroit where he reassured a deeply supportive invitation-only crowd he had no plans to leave the race.
“You’ve probably noticed a lot of speculation lately. What’s Joe Biden going to do? Is he going to stay in the race? Is he going to drop out? Here’s my answer: I am running, and we’re going to win,” the president said last week.
Biden continued along this vein, saying he’s “the nominee of this party because 14 million Democrats like you voted for me” during the primaries this year, a beauty-contest exercise without serious competition anywhere and with no competition at all in states like Florida, which excluded Biden’s opponents from ballot consideration.
“You made me the nominee. No one else. Not the press, not the pundits, not the press, not the donors. You, the voters. You decided. No one else, and I’m not going anywhere,” the president promised.
External pressure has only built on Biden since that rally, a fact acknowledged by some of Michigan’s leading Democrats.
Sen. Gary Peters — Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chair — told CBS News he’d “been talking to the president’s campaign” and relaying “concerns” about the “very close race” and its downballot impacts.
He shied away from offering further “specifics” about his “straightforward and candid assessment” but said the campaign “listened” to his critique in what was a “good, productive conversation.”
Team Trump, meanwhile, is playing to win Michigan just like it did in 2016 — and holds a rally Saturday featuring the candidate and running-mate J.D. Vance in Grand Rapids.
Biden campaign officials said as recently as last week the “clearest pathway” to 270 votes is through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
But indications are that road is treacherously narrow right now, and the latest polling backs up the theory the re-election campaign is running out of time to fix its steering.