Poll: Biden up by 9 points in Pennsylvania
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 9 percentage points among Pennsylvania’s likely voters, according to a new survey — adding to a spate of recent public polling showing the former vice president ahead by single digits in the swing state where he was born.
An NBC News/Marist poll released Wednesday reports that more than half of likely voters in Pennsylvania — 53 percent — prefer Biden, while 44 percent favor Trump.
The survey’s results are consistent with other Pennsylvania polling roughly two months out from Election Day. Although a Monmouth University poll showed Biden with a 13-point advantage among the state’s registered voters in July, most other surveys have him out in front of Trump by only a few percentage points.
The latest Monmouth poll of Pennsylvania published last Wednesday showed Biden with a 4-point edge over Trump, and a Quinnipiac University survey of the state published last Thursday showed Biden leading by 8 points among likely voters.
A native of Scranton, Pa., Biden has his campaign based in Philadelphia, where he kicked off his 2020 White House bid with a rally last May. The former vice president earned the nickname “Pennsylvania’s third senator” during his decades representing Delaware in the Senate.
Trump won Pennsylvania by 1.2 percentage points in 2016, an upset victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. His ability to flip that state and the two Midwestern battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin is widely credited with securing his Electoral College success.
The NBC News/Marist poll was conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, surveying 771 likely voters in Pennsylvania. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
