Results are among registered voters. Respondents who said they didn’t know who they would vote for or who declined to say are not included.Based on New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College polls of registered voters in six battleground states conducted from April 28 to May 9, 2024. By Molly Cook Escobar
(New York Times) Donald J. Trump leads President Biden in five crucial battleground states, a new set of polls shows, as a yearning for change and discontent over the economy and the war in Gaza among young, Black and Hispanic voters threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition.
The surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Mr. Trump was ahead among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup against Mr. Biden in five of six key states: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden led among registered voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin.
[You can find the full results of the polls, including the exact questions that were asked, here. You can see answers to common questions about our polling process here.]
The race was closer among likely voters. Mr. Trump led in five states as well, but Mr. Biden edged ahead in Michigan while trailing only narrowly in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. While Mr. Biden won all six of those states in 2020, victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would be enough for him to win re-election, provided he won everywhere else he did four years ago.
The results were similar in a hypothetical matchup that included minor-party candidates and the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who won an average of 10 percent of the vote across the six states and drew roughly equally from the two major-party candidates.
The findings are mostly unchanged since the last series of Times/Siena polls in battleground states in November. Since then, the stock market has gained 25 percent, Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan has started, and the Biden campaign has unleashed tens of millions of dollars in advertisements across the battleground states.
The polls offer little indication that any of these developments have helped Mr. Biden, hurt Mr. Trump or quelled the electorate’s discontent. Instead, the surveys show that the cost of living, immigration, Israel’s war in Gaza and a desire for change continue to be a drag on the president’s standing. While Mr. Biden benefited from a burst of momentum in the wake of his State of the Union address in March, he continues to trail in the average of national and battleground state polls.
The findings reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the country and serious doubts about Mr. Biden’s ability to deliver major improvements to American life. A majority of voters still desire the return to normalcy promised by Mr. Biden in the last campaign, but voters in battleground states remain particularly anxious, unsettled and itching for change. Nearly 70 percent of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes — or even to be torn down entirely.
