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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Very Little Convention Bump for Trump, but Biden Coming on Strong in Arizona

Fresh off conventions that officially solidified the Democratic and Republican tickets, new polling data shows that the race for the White House has changed little: Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead President Donald Trump nationally and holds notable advantages in a handful of key battleground states.

(CN) — Fresh off conventions that officially solidified the Democratic and Republican tickets, new polling data shows that the race for the White House has changed little: Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead President Donald Trump nationally and holds notable advantages in a handful of key battleground states.

While campaigns typically get a boost in the polls following a political convention, a poll from Morning Consult released Tuesday reports that with both conventions finished, the numbers moved very little. Biden maintains an eight-point national advantage over Trump, 51%-43%, with double-digit leads over the president among women, independents and suburbanites — nearly identical to the support Biden saw in mid-August.

The conventions did not do much to persuade undecided voters, though there weren’t many of those to begin with. Prior to the start of the conventions, 6% of voters said they were either undecided or planned to vote for a third-party candidate. That figure did not change at all after the conventions.

Nationally, voters are much less indecisive compared to the 2016 election. While the 2016 political conventions successfully persuaded 3% of undecided to back one candidate over the other, 17% of voters were still uncertain after the conventions over who to support between then-candidate Trump or Hillary Clinton.

The state of the post-convention race for the White House, according to Tuesday’s polling data, is also largely unchanged among the battleground states that will likely decide the outcome of the presidential contest. Biden continues to enjoy small, margin-of-error leads in states like Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while the former vice president leads more substantially in Michigan and Colorado.

These figures, like their national counterparts, are virtually identical to those collected before the parties’ conventions.

Trump, for his part, enjoys a 5-point lead in Ohio, up one point from before his convention.

Even amid tremendous civil unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha that has commanded airwaves and galvanized scores of demonstrations, the state of the race in Wisconsin — a state Trump won in 2016 by a razor-thin margin — has also seen remarkably little change. Biden leads Trump by nine points in the state, 52%-43%, and while this does represent a three-point jump for Biden compared to pre-convention polling data, the jump is within the margin of error. Like his national lead, Biden also continues to fare well in Wisconsin among women voters, independents and people in the suburbs.

One state, however, has seen some remarkable change in recent weeks: Arizona. While Biden lagged behind Trump by two points in a poll conducted in early August before the start of the Democratic convention, the former VP has seen a seen his standing in the southwestern battleground state improve by double digits.

According to a polling sample of nearly 1,000 Arizona voters, Biden now leads the president by 10 points, 52%-42%. This boost for Biden was helped by a 10-point increase in support among male Arizona voters and a 7-point increase among suburban voters, while Biden also continues to enjoy majority support from Arizona women and independents.

This surge for Biden in the Grand Canyon State comes after Biden has spent considerable resources into a state that has not flipped for the Democrats on the national level since Bill Clinton claimed victory there in 1996. Biden’s Arizona bump also comes after former GOP senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who has not shied away from vocally criticizing the leader of his own party in recent years, officially threw his support behind Biden on the first night of the Republican convention.

Voter perception of the two candidates has changed little since the conventions. Just over half (51%) of voters say they view Biden favorably while 46% view him unfavorably, a three-point favorability boost. Just 43% of voters say they view Trump in a favorable light while 55% say the opposite, numbers that are statistically unchanged from a few weeks ago.

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