Former President Trump leads President Biden in six of seven of the closest swing states, according to a Wall Street Journal poll published Wednesday.
Leaning on dissatisfaction with the economy and swirling questions over Biden’s age, Trump has a multipoint lead in each battleground except for Wisconsin, where Biden leads by 3 points in a three-way race with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., per the survey.
To win reelection, Biden will need to retain the “blue wall” of states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — he flipped in 2020. Trump holds a 2-point lead in Michigan and a 3-point lead in Pennsylvania, though each has a significant portion of undecided voters.
Biden also carried Georgia, Nevada and Arizona in the last election, all of which have stronger Trump support, according to the poll. Trump leads in Georgia by 3 points, in Nevada by 4 points and in Arizona by a significant 5-point margin.
Third party and independent candidates may be the key for either candidate, with the group taking about 15 percent of the vote in the poll across all states. Kennedy has drawn support from both Biden and Trump, and Democrats have doubled down on efforts to urge voters away from him in recent weeks.
Despite briefly running for the Democratic nomination, the independent candidate’s outsider position, government skepticism and anti-vaccine posturing has made him popular with anti-establishment voters in both parties.
On the issues, Trump holds an advantage on the economy, the border and inflation, while Biden has an edge on abortion, according to the poll. Democrats have emphasized reproductive rights as a key issue for November, focusing on in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a rallying point for supporters and starting a push into Florida after the state Supreme Court paved the way for a strict six-week abortion ban Monday.
Despite siding with Trump on economic issues and showing little faith in the national economy, most respondents said their state’s economy was doing well. At least 60 percent of respondents in each swing state except Wisconsin said their state’s economy was in a good situation, while significantly fewer said the same of the national economy.
In Georgia and North Carolina, the divide between national and state economics was largest, with just 38 percent and 33 percent of respondents having a positive view of the national economy but 67 percent and 66 percent saying the state’s economy is doing well, respectively.
Michigan respondents had the most positive view of the economy, with 51 percent of respondents saying the national economy is doing well, and 67 percent saying the same of their state’s.
The Wall Street Journal surveyed 600 registered voters in mid-March for the three-way race data, with a margin of error of 4 percent. The economic data came from a group of 300 registered voters at the same time, with a margin of error of 5.6 percent.