There is finally good news for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
After months of polls showing Donald Trump with a narrow but steady lead over his Democratic rival, a poll released Tuesday suggests Biden is gathering support in swing states that will decide the 2024 election.
It may not yet be enough to improve the presumptive Republican nominee’s overall lead, but the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll shows Biden saw an increase in his numbers after a widely well-received State of the Union address.
The change was most marked in the Blue Wall states. In Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump by one point after reversing last month’s four-point deficit.
In Pennsylvania, Trump’s six-point lead has been eliminated. The candidates are now tied after Trump held a six-point lead last month.
Trump maintains his overall lead over Biden in the seven swing states, but Biden is narrowing his lead in six of them.
They are now tied at Michigan as well.
Doubts about Biden’s advanced age (he would be 86 at the end of a second term) and recent economic problems got his re-election off to a shaky start.
Towards the end of last year, Trump gained a small lead in hypothetical polls.
But Biden campaign officials insisted it was too early to panic.
The latest survey surveyed 4,932 registered voters in seven swing states. The field work took place after Biden followed his State of the Union address with a tour of swing states and sharpened his attacks on Trump.
It found that plans to raise taxes on billionaires are popular among voters in swing states. And the overall results show that Biden is reducing Trump’s lead in the most important states.
It reduced its deficits in Arizona (to five points), Nevada (two points) and North Carolina (six points).
But Trump increased his lead in the seventh state, Georgia (seven points).
And he has a lead in all seven states when you combine the numbers. He has 47 percent to Biden’s 43 percent, with a margin of error of one point.
President Joe Biden delivered a strong performance laying out his platform for the election during his State of the Union address to Congress earlier this month.
To test reactions, JL Partners used a panel of 60 independent voters. The results are not statistically significant, but they provide insight into the audience’s mind.
The poll also found that Biden voters were strongly motivated by the idea of Trump gaining power.
When asked whether their support for Trump or Biden was more of a vote for the chosen candidate or against the other, a gap emerged.
Fewer than three in 10 Trump supporters said their vote was against Biden. However, nearly half of Biden voters said their vote was against Trump.
In Wisconsin, for example, where Biden leads, six in 10 of his supporters said their vote was against Trump.
“Negative energy motivates people,” said Eli Yokley, US political analyst at Morning Consult.
“And people who support Joe Biden today are much more likely to express that negative energy that fueled his 2020 campaign.”
Survey fieldwork began on March 8, the day after the State of the Union. A quick poll for DailyMail.com with a panel of 60 voters found an overall positive view of the speech.
And more than a third of voters said they had seen positive news about Biden recently, the highest level since polling began in October.
At the same time, 68 percent of registered voters in swing states said they favored higher taxes on billionaires and higher income taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year.
During the State of the Union, Biden proposed a 25 percent federal tax on billionaires, saying it was about raising $500 billion. “Just think of what that could do for America,” he said.
On Tuesday, Biden and his vice president are due in North Carolina for a campaign event that will promote his health care agenda.
It’s part of a recent acceleration of election-related travel, which has included fundraising trips to California and New York, as well as events to highlight different points of the campaign.