The presidential primary races have been decided, which means the general election polling season has begun in earnest.
Thus far, those polls have painted a bleak picture for President Joe Biden.
Since last week, the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and Emerson College Polling/The Hill have released a slew of polls showing former President Donald Trump leading Biden in all seven anticipated battleground states, Just the News reported Thursday.
The Republican candidate’s head-to-head edge over Biden ranged from 1 to 4 percentage points in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Together, those states will account for a combined 93 electoral votes in this fall’s presidential election. Pennsylvania presents the biggest prize with 19 electoral votes, followed by North Carolina and Georgia with 16 each; Michigan with 15; Arizona, 11; Wisconsin, 10; and Nevada, six.
In his 2020 race against Trump, Biden received the electoral votes of all of those except North Carolina.
Conventional wisdom holds that the seven states once again will decide the presidency.
If so, the latest polls merely confirmed months-long trends that favor Trump’s return to the White House.
RealClear Polling’s latest averages of polls — nearly all conducted in 2024 — showed Trump leading by 1 percentage point in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, three in Michigan, four in Nevada and five in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
Will battleground states shift toward Trump?
Furthermore, two major factors linger below the surface, and neither would seem to favor Biden.
First, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands a strong chance of cracking double-digits in the nationwide popular vote.
According to RealClear Polling, the latest three-way survey average showed Trump at 40 percent, Biden at 36 and Kennedy at 15.
How that would play out in battleground states remains anyone’s guess.
Thus far, only in Nevada has Kennedy secured enough petition signatures to appear on the ballot, per Just the News.
According to The Hill, however, a pro-Kennedy super PAC has claimed the candidate also has enough signatures to appear on ballots in Arizona and Michigan.
Setting aside the other four battlegrounds, those three states alone suggest that Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will hurt Biden.
RealClear Polling averages for Arizona, Nevada and Michigan showed that with Kennedy in the race, along with independent candidate Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump received a modest boost in each state.
Second — and here is the truly remarkable underlying story of the 2024 presidential election — a large number of black and Latino voters have shifted toward Trump.
It might be too soon to predict how this shift will affect races in the seven battleground states, but the latest polls contain at least one intriguing insight regarding the Southeastern states of Georgia and North Carolina.
“While Mr Biden has increased his support among white voters in [North Carolina], he has lost ground with Black voters, similar to Georgia. Mr Trump has also gained among younger voters in North Carolina,” the U.K.’s Independent reported Wednesday.
Note that the RealClear Polling head-to-head averages showed that among the seven battleground states, Trump held his largest leads in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina.
According to Pew Research, Arizona (25 percent) and Nevada (22 percent) rank as two of only six states in which Latinos account for more than 20 percent of eligible voters.
Meanwhile, black people account for 23 percent of eligible voters in North Carolina and a whopping 33 percent in Georgia.
White voters, on the other hand, predominate in Michigan (78 percent), Pennsylvania (80 percent) and Wisconsin (85 percent). Trump holds his narrowest leads in those three states.
In other words, it appears that growing numbers of nonwhite voters have tuned out the establishment media. Mercifully, the slanderous media narrative that casts Trump and his supporters as racists and bigots has fallen on deaf ears to some extent. Only white liberals seem to cling to their Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Much will change, of course, between now and November.
For instance, Latinos comprise 45 percent of the New Mexico electorate, according to Pew. Should the demographic shift continue, might Trump compete for that state’s five electoral votes?
Likewise, might Kennedy’s familial ties to New England put New Hampshire’s four electoral votes in play for Trump?
In short, Biden’s catastrophic failures and tyrannical regime might yet increase the number of true battleground states.
Either way, the latest polls suggest that the president faces an electoral defeat he very richly deserves.
