Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continues to lead in important polls across the country. In a new set of polling from CNBC/ Change Research, Biden leads President Donald Trump in six swing states, including Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Across the states, Biden has a 4 percent advantage, but his leads in a selection of the individual states are higher. In Wisconsin, for instance, Biden leads by 9 percent in the latest polling. Similarly, in Michigan he leads by 8 percent and in Arizona he leads by 6 percent.
Trump won every single one of the six swing states in question in 2016. Biden would not have to secure victories in the whole list of states in order to successfully deny Trump a second term in office. Together, Florida and Michigan alone have 45 electoral votes. If all else stayed the same as it was in the 2016 results, switching those two states alone from Trump to Biden would mean a Biden victory. In the new Michigan polling data, Biden had 51 percent of the support, and his above-50 percent support level bodes well for the stability of his lead, since no number of undecided voters would be able to shift the state to Trump if Biden successfully secures that level of support in the final election results.
In the CNBC/ Change Research data, Biden’s leads were smallest in North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania, where he led by 2 percent, 3 percent, and 4 percent, respectively. FiveThirtyEight estimates that Pennsylvania is the state that’s most likely to deliver the decisive margin of victory to the winning candidate this November; in other words, it’s the most likely “tipping point,” they estimate. They forecast that Florida is the second most likely “tipping point” state, followed by Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan. Biden’s leads in the new CNBC polls from each of these states are a good sign for Democrats.
The CNBC/ Change Research polling was conducted after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it included questions about the path forward. A full 57 percent of respondents said that they do not believe Trump should be able to nominate a Ginsburg replacement (early voting has already started in some states, and many want the people’s voice to be heard before another Supreme Court confirmation). Only 37 percent of respondents supported Trump filling Ginsburg’s seat.
