Newsweek - Joe Biden Suffers Polling Disaster in Battleground State
Former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania by four points, according to a poll released on Monday.
The poll, by the Republican firm Cygnal, surveyed 800 likely voters in the state and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.45 percent. It was conducted on June 27 and 28, straddling the first presidential debate—where the president's poor performance led to calls from allies for him to drop out of the race, citing concerns about his age and fitness.
In the poll's head-to-head question, 48.3 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump, while 44 percent chose Biden. The remaining 7.6 percent of respondents were undecided. In a full-ballot question, Trump maintained his four-point lead, receiving 42.4 percent against Biden's 38.1 percent. Of the remaining respondents, 8.8 percent said they would vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and 10.1 percent supported another third-party candidate or were undecided.
Trump also led Biden in favorability ratings, with the Republican receiving -8 percent net favorability to Biden's -21 percent net favorability. Newsweek contacted the Biden and Trump campaigns for comment by email outside usual business hours.
On the second day of the poll, respondents were asked about the CNN-hosted debate in Atlanta the evening before, and 66 percent said they watched some or all of it. Twenty-two percent of viewers responded negatively to Biden's performance, 18 percent said both candidates were bad and 13 percent responded negatively to Trump.
The next most common takeaway for viewers was "disappointment or sadness" (8 percent) followed by concern about Biden's "mental abilities" (7.5 percent).
The polling results are not encouraging for the incumbent Democrat, with 69 percent of respondents saying the nation is on the wrong track.
Brock McCleary, a Cygnal and Trump 2020 pollster, said the results show momentum building for the former president. "Trump turned the Keystone State red in 2016 but Biden was able to flip it back to blue in 2020, meaning Pennsylvania is likely [to] determine the next President," he said in a statement.
Pennsylvania is a key battleground state, often serving as a microcosm for the country's political climate. It has gone the way of the presidency in the previous four elections, and no Democrat has won the White House without it since 1948. It holds additional importance as one of the most populous states, carrying substantial weight in the Electoral College.
Still, with four months to go until voters head to the polls, experts have warned that it is too early to call the election. Todd Landman, a professor of political science at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., previously told Newsweek it was "still too far out from the election" to read much into swing state polls.
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