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'Dire:' New Polling of Seven Battleground States Shows Biden Trailing in This Many of Them

Earlier in the week, Emerson and The Hill released a string of new polls out of seven critical 2024 battleground states.  The resulting data found former President Donald Trump leading sitting President Joe Biden by three points in Arizona, six points in Georgia, two points in Michigan, six points in Nevada, three points in North Carolina, two points in Pennsylvania, and three points in Wisconsin.  Those were the direct match-up outcomes.  When third party candidates were added into the mix as options, Trump's margins expanded in every single state surveyed.  Here are the head-to-heads:


And here are the expanded field numbers:  


Critics, especially on the left, pointed to Emerson's track record, citing various polling misses in recent cycles and arguing that the outfit has a pro-Republican 'house bias.' For the sake of argument, let's accept that contention and dismiss all of those findings as inaccurate. Surely another batch of polling in the exact same states, published by an entirely separate organization, would eliminate the supposed bias and paint a clearer picture of reality, right? Enter Bloomberg's brand new data, in partnership with Morning Consult.  Well, well, well:


Same states, different pollsters, strikingly similar numbers. Trump leads across the board -- by six points in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania (!), with tighter edges in Michigan and Wisconsin, and a healthier margin in North Carolina. As Tom Bevan notes, perhaps more concerning for Biden than the margins in the polls are his vote shares being mired in the low-to-mid 40's. Scroll through the RealClearPolitics averages in these states.  The 45th president is ahead of the 46th president in six of the seven averages right now, with Biden up by less than one percentage point in the Keystone state.  Add in Trump's two-to-three point lead in the national averages and it's pretty clear that all else being equal, if the election were held next week, Trump would be the odds-on favorite to win it.  

As I've written before, I'm very much open to the possibility that any number of factors could shift over the coming eight-plus months, and these dynamics change accordingly.  Conservatives who believe Trump has the election in the bag right now could end up sorely mistaken.  That said, red flags are flapping all over the place for the incumbent at the moment, and his party seems paralyzed to do anything about it.  Indeed, the only real opposition he's facing is from a coalition of terrorism apologists angry at him for being too pro-Israel against the monsters of Hamas.  Biden panders to these ghouls at his own moral and political peril.  And if Democrats are banking on one or more felony convictions to derail Trump this year, they might -- might -- need to recalibrate those expectations:


I'll leave you with Team Trump highlighting the outrage of Laken Riley's murder, allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant with previous arrests and citations:


On the other side of the aisle, they'd prefer to pretend these things aren't happening: