Biden overtakes Trump in polling average for first time this year
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Joe Biden has overtaken Donald Trump in polling averages for the US presidential race for the first time this year.
Mr Biden now has a small but significant lead over his Republican rival, whose numbers have gradually eroded since he was convicted in his “hush money” case last month.
Three weeks ago, the US president trailed Trump by 1.7 per cent nationally, according to the 538 polling aggregator.
Mr Biden has now pushed ahead with a 0.1 lead after the polls steadily narrowed since Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30.
Although Trump retains his lead in the election’s battleground states, all of them show a swing towards Mr Biden, Axios reports.
However, in a further reversal from the early months of the race, Trump has now raised more money than his rival, after his conviction spurred donations to his campaign.
In the seven battleground states, polling shows a swing of at least 1.1 per cent towards Mr Biden since Trump was convicted at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.
The Democrat appears to be heading for victory in two of the states: Michigan and Wisconsin, where he has a 0.5 per cent lead in both.
In Michigan, polling averages show that Trump had a 1.1 per cent lead on May 30, which was cut in half the day after his conviction and gradually evaporated over the following weeks.
Swing state polling, as it stands, suggests the Republican would claim more than 270 electoral college votes and win the election.
However, it gives Mr Biden, who now brands his rival a “convicted felon”, some much-needed momentum less than five months away from polling day.
“The polls suggest that Trump had huge momentum in the spring that has been blunted,” Mark Penn, a former pollster to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, told The Telegraph. “But Trump continues to have an edge in swing states.”
However, he cautioned against reading too much into the data, given the margin of error and developments in the race over the coming months.
“Is Trump four points ahead or two points behind? Polls at this point are not that finely accurate, nor is the electorate set,” Mr Penn said.
“And there are scaled events about to occur, such as 50 million people watching a [presidential] debate, which are big enough to affect the polls.”
Recent filings to the Federal Election Commission show Trump has assembled an imposing war chest to fight the rest of the presidential campaign in the crucial final months.
He has lagged well behind Mr Biden and critics have lambasted his team for failing to pivot from the battles of the Republican primary onto an election footing.
However, filings for the end of May show the Trump campaign had $116.6 million in the bank, compared to $91.6 million for Mr Biden.
On May 30 – the day Trump was convicted in New York – and May 31, the Republican’s campaign said it received at least six times as many daily donations compared to a typical day.
Timothy Mellon, a reclusive GOP donor, handed $50 million to Make America Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump Super PAC, a day after the trial concluded. It is one of the largest single donations ever disclosed in US political history.
However, Mr Biden outspent his rival almost four-to-one, investing heavily in political advertising and funding his campaign’s more developed infrastructure.
Jim Merrill, a Republican strategist, said that Trump’s fundraising muscle and swing state polling put him in a stronger position at this stage of the race, but added that the situation could change “rapidly”.
“The Biden campaign is clearly prepared to make this a referendum on Trump to try and drive [Nikki] Haley voters, moderates and independents away from him, as well as distract from the reality that Biden’s approval numbers are historically low,” he said.
