Ranking the swing states: Where is Biden most in danger against Trump?
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President Biden’s reelection will largely come down to how he performs in six key battleground states in 2024 as he prepares for a rematch against former President Trump.
Despite Biden’s considerable pickups in 2020, some Democrats are sounding the alarm about his chances next year and are careful not to be overly optimistic. Recent polling out of the major swing states has only raised fears for the incumbent, as some have shown Biden trailing Trump.
Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are shaping up to be particularly tough contests as his poll numbers drop with once-reliable constituencies including Black, Latino and young voters. Meanwhile, full-blown battlegrounds such as Michigan and Pennsylvania are also showing signs of shifting away from Biden, fueling the sense that the Midwest — the bedrock of Biden’s last victory — could be up for grabs next year.
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Here are the six toughest battlegrounds for Biden in November.
Arizona
Arizona was one of the states at the center of Biden’s victory in 2020. The president’s senior campaign advisers bet that he could tank Trump in that part of the Sunbelt despite odds set against them amid concerns over immigration.
In the end it worked, with Biden winning over enough Latino voters to make the state part of his winning coalition. After Democrats were also successful in last year’s gubernatorial race there, the party felt even more hopeful that it could count the Grand Canyon State as a shoo-in.
But that trend could be shifting ahead of next fall. Biden’s economic message has fallen flat among crucial voters, including the state’s sizable immigrant population. High inflation, which has dragged on throughout much of his first term, is still a major concern for residents struggling to pay high prices for common goods. Some reports note that while unemployment is low, other expenses such as housing have created resentment towards the president they gambled on last time against conservative headwinds.
Domestic woes aren’t the only challenges Biden is facing in Arizona. Beyond Trump, who intends to compete heavily in the state, he’s also losing support to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent who consistently attracts double-digit support. In a focus group conducted by Engagious/Sago and released by Axios, a small sample of “swing” voters in the group, including Democrats, Republicans and independents, said they preferred Kennedy over Biden — a preview of potential challenges if Kennedy and other outside candidates qualify for enough state ballots to compete in the general election.
In a sign of Biden’s recent struggles in the state, a RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average of Arizona voters finds Trump leading Biden overall by roughly 5 points.
Nevada
The numbers out of Nevada are flat-out not good for Biden.
Early data in surveys show him behind Trump by as much as 11 percent and as little as 3 percent. The RCP polling average of Nevada finds Biden trailing Trump by 4 points.
In the past, things were slightly better. Biden narrowly won the battleground against Trump in 2020, underperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers. And Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) won her Senate race last year, clinching the majority in the upper chamber for the party.
“Joe Biden’s standing in Nevada probably isn’t as bad as polling suggests. But Democrats should still be worried,” wrote Jon Ralston, a longtime chronicler of Nevada politics and founder of The Nevada Independent, in a recent piece in The Atlantic.
Biden recently submitted his paperwork for the state’s primary, a change from the traditional caucus system that Democrats lobbied to abandon this cycle. The president performed well during the 2020 Democratic primary, giving his campaign a boost after he failed to catch on in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But that goodwill doesn’t appear to be extending to Biden as the presumptive nominee, at least as of now, with registered voters expressing discontentment about his White House term. A majority of Nevada voters — 54 percent — said that they do not approve of Biden’s job in office, according to a CNN/SSRS poll from October.
“Nevada matters in presidential elections, but we are also, let’s face it, a tad weird,” Ralston wrote in The Atlantic article.
The Biden campaign has made an early footprint on the ground this cycle, aware that its swingy status could tip the scales in either direction.
“We’re up on TV in the state, talking about issues that are important to Nevadans, [and] talking about the [president’s] record on prescription drugs, reducing costs for seniors, bringing clean energy jobs in the state,” Alana Mounce, the Biden campaign’s ballot access director, told The Nevada Independent in an interview in September. “We’ll continue to do that in our communications with voters.”
Trump, meanwhile, faces more legal woes in the Silver State, with the attorney general investigating several GOP figures who may have interfered to help him in the 2020 election, according to a report in Politico.
Georgia
Georgia was Biden’s prized win in 2020. His herculean victory there was also likely key to making it possible for Democrats to gain control of the Senate. It showed that he could successfully appeal to voters’ social and racial justice concerns by promoting things such as voting rights and policing reforms.
His first term, however, has turned off some already skeptical voters. Despite having a majority in the Senate as a result of Georgians’ historic voting turnout, two moderate Democrats made passing voting rights legislation impossible, crippling one of Biden’s central campaign pledges.
Now he’s up against new problems — in particular, his likely GOP opponent. Trump’s legal challenges haven’t seemed to diminish his standing in the state, even as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking an August trial date in the Peach State for an election interference and racketeering case against him.
Biden, instead, is currently underwater. In a Times/Siena College survey that has deeply concerned many Democrats, Trump earned 49 percent of support with voters, compared with Biden’s 43 percent. The RCP polling average out of the state shows Trump leading Biden by nearly 6 points.
Pennsylvania
If anyone can challenge the notion of a home state advantage, it may be Biden. The Scranton native counted on Pennsylvania to deliver him voters like the ones he grew up with. He leaned into an economic populist message particularly toward the end of his last campaign, which ultimately gave him an edge over New York native Trump.
That may be a tougher sell this time around. An Emerson College poll shows Biden lagging behind Trump by 3 percentage points among registered voters — 43 to 46 percent, respectively. Among likely voters, he dips 1 point lower. A Quinnipiac poll also showed the incumbent president slightly behind the former one, and with a favorability rating that has long concerned Democrats: Just 39 percent of voters surveyed said they have a positive view of him. The RCP polling average out of Pennsylvania shows Trump with a narrow advantage heading into next year.
The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have both recently taken out advertising promoting his signature accomplishments, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed through Congress that Biden signed last year.
“He got to work fixing supply chains, fighting corporate greed, passing laws to lower the cost of medicine, cut utility bills and make us more energy independent,” said a Biden campaign ad from September, as part of a four-month series blasted through battlegrounds such as Michigan and Arizona. “There’s more to do, but President Biden is getting results that matter,” the ad concludes.
Michigan
Michigan was central to Biden’s Midwest success. He won by less than 3 percent, but in a contest with two polarizing nominees, that’s a fairly comfortable margin.
Next November is likely to be more challenging. Arguably the biggest hurdle right now is his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which has unexpectedly upended the campaign.
Michigan has a large Arab American population, and polling indicates that Biden has lost considerable standing among that group since the deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel. A survey from Lake Research Partners, which conducted polling for Biden last election, found that he’s lost ground with both Arab Americans and Muslims, who traditionally vote Democratic. Just 16 percent in a sample of 513 likely Democrats polled support him at this point in the cycle, which is significantly lower than last election. The RCP polling average shows Trump leading Biden by 2 points currently.
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D), a Squad member, has also drawn attention to Biden’s response to the war as the only Palestinian woman in Congress. She has expressed vocal opposition to the Biden administration’s decision not to call for a cease-fire. Biden’s position is in line with many Democrats on Capitol Hill, but it’s also against what some of Tlaib’s constituents in her district and other progressives believe is the right step toward peace.
“Mr. President, the American people are not with you on this one,” Tlaib said in a video she posted on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, on Nov. 3. “We will remember in 2024.”
Biden’s performance in Michigan will likely hinge, at least in part, on his ability to turn out Arab Americans and Muslims, as well as young voters in urban areas who also have expressed support for a humanitarian approach to Palestine.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin holds a special place for Democrats. The party wants to keep up its winning streak in the Badger State, including Biden’s 2020 victory and a Supreme Court win on abortion this year that set them up for success. The party hopes that more electoral accomplishments will mean the sting of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss in the state will be a distant memory.
But much like the other states where he previously squeaked by, Wisconsin could prove to be a challenge for Biden. He and Trump are in a statistical tie in several recent polls. The latest RCP average has the president only leading by less than 1 percent over Trump.
Biden may be able to make Democrats’ pro-choice message work in his favor. The party won a critical judicial seat in April by promoting women’s rights and access to abortion, riding a wave of enthusiasm that also secured several competitive districts in the 2022 midterms.
Skeptics, however, say that those victories were possible when voters were presented with a galvanizing part of the Democratic agenda on the ballot, rather than Biden himself as a candidate.
The state’s Supreme Court will soon hear a redistricting case that could prove consequential on the general election results, with Democrats angling for a better-drawn map.
But Republicans are equally energized in the state, and, if for some reason Trump is not the GOP nominee, Biden’s chances of success could be even lower, according to a Marquette University Law School poll that showed him losing by 9 percentage points to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, coming in at 44 percent support to her 53 percent among registered Wisconsin voters.
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