President Joe Biden's poll numbers are continuing to slide downward, while former President Donald Trump, the clear front-runner in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, is enjoying poll numbers that are at a higher point than at any time over the past year, spelling trouble ahead for Biden's chances at reelection.
Biden's standing, when matched in head-to-head polling against Trump, is showing worse in all but two of the latest surveys from 13 pollsters. Earlier this month, Trump was showing as being ahead in four of the six swing states in a New York Times/Siena College poll, reported Politico.
Even though the polls suggest that most of Biden's drop is coming from voters abandoning him, that doesn't mean that they are swinging over to back Trump.
Still, Trump's share in the national polling average is higher than at any time this year, with surveys showing him ahead by 8 points in Arizona and 5 points in Michigan.
Meanwhile, Biden's drop comes from several factors, including losing young voters, the Israel-Hamas war, and the number of independent and third-party candidates pulling voters away from him and Trump.
And this week, Trump came out ahead of Biden by four percentage points, 46% to 42% among voters younger than 35, according to a recent NBC News poll.
Biden did come out ahead of Trump after posting single-digit leads among voters ages 18-34 in polls from the Morning Consult, Fox News, and Quinnipiac University, but Trump still led him in the polls among all voters.
One theory suggests that the polling numbers may be coming because liberal younger voters oppose the Biden administration's support for Israel in the war with Hamas, even if many will still vote for him next year.
The polls are also showing that Biden's already-low approval rating is dropping even more. Earlier this month, his approval rating dropped to 38%, according to FiveThirtyEight averaging, the lowest since July 2022.
Trump's numbers, meanwhile, are going up. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump's overall average went above 47% this week, almost equal to his vote share in 2020.
Many of the polls showing Trump with a majority do not include undecided voters, but even with the polls that show those voters, Trump's numbers have climbed slightly, such as in the Fox News poll showing him over Biden by 50% to 46%.
Swing states also appear to be moving away from Biden, according to the polls, even with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign focusing about $12 million on those states.
Polls by Morning Consult and Bloomberg News show that Trump is leading Biden in six of seven swing states, and the New York Times/Siena poll shows him ahead of Biden in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Further, a Noble Predictive Insights poll in Arizona showed Trump ahead by 8 points and an EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan has him ahead by 5 points, putting the former president on top in two major states Biden won in 2020.
There were also some eye-popping results in other Biden-won states from 2020. Trump was ahead by 8 points last week in a Noble Predictive Insights poll in Arizona and by 5 points in an EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan.