Democratic pollster: too much ‘inconsistency’ to draw conclusions about Biden-Trump rematch – live | US politics

From the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly, here’s more about the major poll released today that shows Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump in several swing states, and what it says about the state of the presidential race:

Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states less than six months out from election day, new polls showed.

The surveys from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College put the former president up in Pennsylvania (three points), Arizona (seven), Michigan (seven), Georgia (10) and Nevada (12). Biden led by two points in Wisconsin.

All leads bar Trump’s in Georgia and Nevada were within the margin of error.

As the poll resonated throughout the political scene, the Biden campaign issued a statement from Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.

“The only consistency in recent public polls is inconsistency,” Garin said.

“These results need to be weighed against the 30-plus polls that show Biden up and gaining – which is exactly why drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake.”

Trump is currently on trial in New York City, on 34 criminal charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.

Despite his electoral struggles, Joe Biden has few open detractors in the Democratic party. The same cannot be said for Donald Trump, who has had several former top allies in the GOP turn his back on him – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will vote for Biden in November, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:

They have broken with Donald Trump. They have gone public with their concerns about the threat that he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But vote for Joe Biden? That is a bridge too far.

A split has emerged in the “Never Trump” movement in the Republican party. There are some who denounce the former US president and contend that, in what is essentially a two-party system, there is a moral imperative to vote for his Democratic opponent in November.

Then there are the Republicans who forcefully disparage Trump but stop short of endorsing Biden, suggesting that both choices are unpalatable, forcing them to consider another option such as writing in a different name on the ballot.

How might Joe Biden turn his situation around ahead of November’s election? One way would be to remind Americans of the steps he has taken to improve their financial situation, the Guardian Steven Greenhouse reports:

To the dismay of Democrats, blue-collar voters have lined up increasingly behind Donald Trump, but political experts say Joe Biden can still turn things around with that large and pivotal group by campaigning hard on “kitchen table” economic issues.

With just six months to go until the election, recent polls show that Trump has stronger support among blue-collar Americans than he did in 2020. But several political analysts told the Guardian that Biden can bring back enough of those voters to win if he hammers home the message that he is helping Americans on pocketbook issues – for instance, by canceling student debt and cutting insulin prices.

According to Celinda Lake, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee, Biden needs to talk more often and more effectively about how his policies mean “real benefits” for working families and how he’s battling on their behalf against “villains” like greedy pharmaceutical companies.

“We need to have a dramatic framing that we’re going to take on villains to make the economy work for you and your family,” said Lake, who did polling for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The villains can be a lot of things – corporations that don’t pay any taxes or drug companies that make record profits while they gouge you on prices.”

One more finding of the poll released this morning into Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s swing state support.

Though the survey was conducted after the beginning of Trump’s trial on charges related to falsifying business records connected to hush money payments, it did not find that voters were watching it particularly closely. Thirty-five percent of respondents thought it would end in a conviction, and only 29% were paying attention at all.

Today is set to be one of the biggest days of the New York trial thus far, with the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen taking the stand. We have a live blog following his testimony, and you can read it here:

For all the worries it sparked about Joe Biden’s chances in November, this morning’s New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College poll contained good news for Democrats’ chances of maintaining their Senate control.

The party’s candidates were ahead in four states that will be crucial to determining whether or not Republicans are able to seize back the majority in November. The poll found, specifically:

• Incumbent Tammy Baldwin was up against her challenger Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, with 49% support against his 40%.

• In Nevada, Jacky Rosen led her challenger Sam Brown with 40% support against his 38%.

• In the race for Arizona’s Senate seat, Ruben Gallego is ahead with 45% support against Kari Lake’s 41%.

• Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey has 46% support against David McCormick’s 41%.

However, the poll did not cover Ohio and Montana, both red states where incumbent Democratic senators will have to win re-election in order for the party to keep its majority, assuming Democrats do not pick up seats anywhere else, which is considered unlikely.

And even if they triumph in all these states, Democrats are expected to lose a seat representing deep-red West Virginia, giving them a 50-50 tie with Republicans in the Senate – meaning Biden will have to win re-election in order for them to keep their majority.

Joe Biden’s campaign reached out to share the thoughts of Democratic pollster Geoff Garin regarding this morning’s survey finding the president trailing Donald Trump in several swing states.

Garin argues that the poll clashes with other surveys that found Biden is gaining support – and that it is simply too early to tell how the election will shake out. Here are his thoughts:

The only consistency in recent public polls is inconsistency. These results need to be weighed against the 30-plus polls that show Biden up and gaining – which is exactly why drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake. The reality is that many voters are not paying close attention to the election and have not started making up their minds — a dynamic also reflected in today’s poll. These voters will decide this election and only the Biden campaign is doing the work to win them over.

This morning’s poll comes with less than six months to go until the 5 November election, and underscores how formidable of a challenger Donald Trump will be to Joe Biden. But, as the Guardian’s David Smith reported, the political landscape is historically unstabl,e and plenty could change in the months before polls open:

“You know what I hate?” Donald Trump asked in Freeland, Michigan, on Wednesday night. “When these guys get on television, they say – pundits, you know, the great pundits that never did a thing in their whole lives – ‘You know, we have two very unpopular candidates. We have Biden or we have Trump. These are very unpopular.’”

Watched by a crowd of adoring fans in Make America Great Again (Maga) regalia, against the backdrop of a plane marked “Trump” in giant gold letters, the former US president protested a little too much: “I’m not unpopular!”

Opinion polls disagree, showing Trump with a low approval rating thanks to voter concerns over his stance on abortion, his four criminal cases and the threat he poses to constitutional democracy. Fortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, Biden has job performance troubles of his own centred on inflation, immigration and his handling of the war in Gaza.

Call it the resistible force against the movable object. Six months out from one of the most consequential elections in American history, only a fool would bet with confidence on the outcome of the first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.

Larry Jacobs, director of the center for the study of politics and governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s almost impossible to imagine Biden winning when you start stacking up the case against him. The economy appears to be in decline with high inflation. You’ve got signs of the Democratic coalition fraying, including the extraordinary protests and arrests of youth on college campuses, the backlash among Arab Americans with regards to Gaza.

“You put that together and it’s like, how could Biden win? And then you turn to Trump and it’s, how could a candidate who’s openly running on defying the will of voters win? It’s just an incomprehensible set of choices.”

The New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer poll released today found that one of the reasons why Joe Biden is lagging in support among groups who backed him in 2020 is his handling of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The survey also found a more surprising explanation for why many voters do not want another four years of Biden: a desire for change in the United States – which they do not believe the president can bring.

Biden’s handling of the conflict in Gaza, or his foreign policy more broadly, was the reason cited by 13% of those who voted for him in 2020 but do not plan to do so again this year, the poll found. Of that group, only 17% called themselves sympathetic to Israel. That finding underscores the tensions among Democrats and their supporters over the president’s approach to the war, amid concerns of excessive civilian deaths.

The poll also found a substantial desire for change in the country, and a belief that Donald Trump was more likely to deliver it. A majority of respondents backed making changes in America, with 14% saying the system needs “to be torn down entirely”, and 55% backing “major changes”. Trump would bring more change the survey finds, although voters are split over whether that would be good or bad. But unlike Biden’s detractors over Gaza, these voters are moderate or conservative leaning, underscoring the breadth of the groups the president may have to win back to triumph in November.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. The Biden campaign woke up to some disquieting news this morning, when a major poll was released showing that Donald Trump still leads Joe Biden in five of the six swing states that will be crucial to deciding the November election. Perhaps the most concerning part about the poll from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer was that while it was news, it was not exactly new – surveys have for months found the president trailing his predecessor in states he carried four years ago. What’s notable about this one is that the presidential campaign is now well underway, with Biden campaigning across the country in recent weeks, and his allies spending millions on advertisements intended to rebuild the coalition that elected him to the White House in 2020. Yet despite all that effort, the poll does not show much of an increase in his support.

Perhaps more worrying for Biden’s prospects is what the survey says about the voting groups that are turning against him. While Black voters have been a reliable Democratic voting bloc, Trump’s support among them is 20%, the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in decades. The two men are also tied in support among Hispanic voters and 18-29-year-olds, groups that Biden won majorities of in 2020. We’ll tell you more about what else this poll has to say – and how Biden’s supporters are taking it – later on.

Here’s what else is going on:

• Trump’s trial on business fraud charges continues in Manhattan, with the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen expected to take the stand. Follow our live coverage here.

• Bob Menendez, New Jersey’s Democratic senator, goes on trial today on a raft of corruption charges connected to allegedly using his position to aid the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

• Despite Biden’s worrying poll numbers, the same survey finds Democratic candidates leading in races that will decide control of the Senate.