In recent polling publicized by Reuters, President Joe Biden holds a lead of four percentage points among prospective voters who told pollsters they were sure to vote across seven states where election results were the closest in the 2020 presidential face-off. That list includes Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan, most of which, in fact, went to Biden when he last faced Trump.
That’s the match-up for the general election next year that presently appears most likely, and it’s the one polled behind these numbers: Biden against Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. Though a GOP presidential primary is technically continuing, none of them are coming anywhere close to Trump in relevant polls.
The results from this Reuters survey at the national level were rather inconclusive, with a massive share opting for an option other than Trump or Biden at a rate for which there’s no recent precedent in presidential elections — no matter the extensive apathy that’s also been seen among some Americans in those years. In the most recent presidential race, the Libertarian nominee (whose party normally performs the best among alternatives to the two main parties) barely surpassed one percent nationally. The actual, national numbers from Reuters had 38 percent going with Trump, 36 percent backing Biden, and 26 percent either picking someone else or saying they didn’t know.
In general, polling continues rocking back and forth with whether it shows Trump or Biden in the lead, though the subset showing specifically Trump with a lead often gets attention. Currently, federal prosecutors are hoping to keep intact a scheduled start of early March for Trump’s trial on criminal charges of attempted election subversion, currently pushing for the Supreme Court to take up Trump’s arguments he holds wide-ranging presidential immunity so the dispute can be resolved more quickly. Dragging out the appeals could delay trial.
