He’s leading or tied with Donald Trump in Southern battleground states.
A set of new polls show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a narrow lead — or a tie — with President Donald Trump in the Southern states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, a potentially promising sign for Biden’s odds of winning the White House. In this election cycle, political analysts consider Florida and North Carolina to be swing states — and Texas and Georgia to be possible swing states, as well. Considering that Trump won all of them in 2016 — including outstripping Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Texas by 9 percentage points — the new polling speaks to the president’s vulnerabilities as Election Day swiftly approaches. The latest CBS News Battleground Tracker polls show Biden leading Trump 50 percent to 48 percent among likely voters in Florida; Biden over Trump in North Carolina 51 percent to 47 percent; and Biden tied with Trump 49-49 in Georgia. The results are close enough that Trump could regain his advantage ahead of November 3, but it is striking to see Biden performing so well in states that Trump easily won before, and to see a Democratic candidate putting up big numbers in a region that has skewed Republican for decades. In a broader average of recent polls tracked by FiveThirtyEight, as of October 25, Biden also leads in Florida by 2.4 percentage points, and in North Carolina by 2.6 percentage points, but is essentially tied in Georgia, where he has a scant half-percentage point lead. Most worryingly for Trump, perhaps, is that Biden garners more trust from voters on the top tier issue of handling the coronavirus pandemic. According to the CBS polling, in Florida, Biden leads Trump 49 to 41 percent on the issue; in North Carolina he leads 50 to 39 percent; and in Georgia 48 to 41 percent. CNN’s polling expert Harry Enten has argued this is bad news for Trump, since historical polling data suggests that in elections where there’s an issue that surpasses the economy in attention, then “whoever is most trusted most on the non-economic issue is likely to win the election.
