The battleground state of Pennsylvania is setting up to be a tight race in November, with President Trump in a statistical tie in theoretical head-to-head match-ups with each of the top Democratic presidential candidates in the state, according to a new poll.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fares best among Democratic candidates against Trump in Pennsylvania, based on the Muhlenberg College poll released Thursday.
Sanders, who is leading the field after the early voting states, has 49 percent of the vote compared with Trump’s 46 percent in the head-to-head match-up. The candidates are in statistical dead-heat, falling within the poll’s 5.5 percentage point margin of error.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each tie Trump in the mock election poll, both getting the same 47 percent as Trump in the match-up.
Biden and Warren had each had a lead over Trump in a November poll, but their support shrank as Trump’s slightly grew putting them in a tie with the Republican incumbent.
When matched against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Trump received 45 percent compared with the senator’s 44 percent, based on the poll.
Trump got 46 percent when paired against former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg who received 45 percent.
Trump has the largest lead over former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Trump received 48 percent support compared with Bloomberg’s 45 percent in the poll. Trump’s lead is still within the poll’s margin of error.
Despite Trump’s slight lead or tie against the Democrats, the same poll found 54 percent of Pennsylvania voters said Trump does not deserve to be reelected and 42 percent said he does.
Pennsylvania is among states in the Democratic National Committee’s Battleground Build-Up 2020 program. The party will spend millions of dollars in the states to prepare for the eventual nominee’s race against Trump.
Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The poll surveyed 424 registered voters in Pennsylvania between Feb. 12 and 20. Forty-seven percent of the poll’s respondents identified as Democrats, 40 percent identified as Republicans and 11 percent identified as independent. The poll is weighted for gender, age, region, party, race and education.