Trump takes lead in Biden’s birth state of Pennsylvania as most say they were better off under ex-prez: poll
Maybe Joe Biden can’t go home again.
Former President Donald Trump is narrowly leading President Biden in Pennsylvania — a battleground state that helped decide the 2020 election and the state where Biden was born and lived for part of his childhood — according to a poll released Wednesday.
The survey from Marist College shows Trump receiving 47% support from registered voters with Biden getting 45%. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came in a distant third at 3%, with the Green Party’s Jill Stein and independent Cornel West each getting 1%.
Trump, 77, led Biden, 81, by the same margin among voters who said they were “definitely voting” on Nov. 5, with the presumptive Republican nominee leading 48% to 46%, RFK Jr. at 3% and Stein getting 1%.
The 45th president narrowly led the incumbent among self-described independents (42%-40%), while receiving 23% support among black voters and edging Biden among voters under 35 years old (46%-45%) and members of Generation X (50%-43%).
Most alarmingly for the White House, a clear majority (53%) of both Pennsylvania registered voters and definite 2024 voters said they and their families were better off during Trump’s four years in office than under Biden.
Trump won Pennsylvania over Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just over 44,000 votes out of nearly 5.9 million ballots cast.
Four years later, Biden swung the commonwealth back into the Democratic column, beating Trump by a little more than 80,000 votes out of more than 6.8 million cast.
The small margins have prompted both the Trump and Biden campaigns to spend significant time in Pennsylvania, with the Democrat making repeat trips to his birth city of Scranton to stress his roots.
Some Republicans have also expressed concern over the 16.6% support former 2024 GOP candidate Nikki Haley got in the state’s April 23 primary, more than seven weeks after suspending her presidential campaign.
Haley has since said she would be voting for Trump, potentially changing the opinion of the 157,000 Pennsylvanians who supported her.
The Marist poll indicated that the election is still up in the air with less than five months to go, with 20% of 2020 Trump supporters saying they could still change their mind and 19% of 2020 Biden voters saying the same.
The key issues for Pennsylvania registered voters included “preserving democracy,” which 31% said was top of mind in deciding on their candidate, followed by inflation (30%), immigration (17%) and abortion (10%).
The Marist poll surveyed 1,277 Pennsylvania adults June 3-6, with a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points among registered voters and 3.9 percentage points among those who definitely planned to vote in this election.
