By Arjun Singh
A new poll shows former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden in six swing states in the 2024 presidential election, according to the poll published by Morning Consult on Friday.
Biden and Trump are the leading candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations, respectively, whose victory in their respective primaries would make the 2024 election’s major party nominees the same as the 2020 election. Despite Trump facing criminal indictments on dozens of state and federal felony counts in four jurisdictions, he currently leads Biden by several percentage points in six swing states that are widely regarded as critical to winning the presidency, and whose votes gave the election to Trump and Biden in 2016 and 2020, respectively, according to the poll.
Trump leads Biden by nine percentage points in Georgia and North Carolina, four percentage points in Arizona and Nevada, three percentage points in Pennsylvania and two percentage points in Wisconsin, according to Morning Consult’s poll. Together, the states — whose voting patterns have varied in the past — have a total of 77 electoral college votes.
Were each of these states’ electoral votes won by Trump he would be elected president by a margin of 295 electoral votes to 243 for Biden, according to a model by CNN.
The poll includes not only Trump and Biden but also well-known independent candidates such as environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and academic Cornel West. Kennedy, the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and son of the late Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, has between 8 and 13 percent support across the seven states, while West has between 1 and 2 percent support.
The emergence of independent candidates willing to run in a general election has been interpreted by commentators as a challenge to Biden, with Democrats fearing that they will draw moderate votes away from him, unlike Trump’s loyal base of Republican supporters, which would give Trump an electoral edge in the plurality-based voting system used by all states. Democrats, including members of the Kennedy family, have sought to discourage both Kennedy and West from running.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 7 and surveyed 4,922 registered voters across the United States.
Trump and Biden’s campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
