New polls give Trump edge over Biden in key swing states

Even with his main political rival stuck in a courtroom most days in recent weeks, President Joe Biden continues to face real headwinds when it comes to his 2024 election hopes.

As Newsweek explains, recent polling shows that Trump would likely beat Biden in six key battlegrounds were the contest held today, surely causing sleepless nights in the White House.

Biden poll slump continues

With the current president and his predecessor expected to face-off against one another in the fall, attentions have turned to the handful of states that routinely prove pivotal in determining who wins the White House.

Recent data gleaned by the Cook Political Report, GS Strategy Group, and BSG offer Biden a gloomy outlook, indeed.

Whereas Biden prevailed in the swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin last time around, with Trump taking North Carolina, the aforementioned polling outfits now suggest that the reverse could be true in 2024.

In keeping with Trump's strong showing in recent surveys, a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll recently showed the former president ahead of the current one in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The same poll showed the two candidates in a tie in Nevada and gave Biden a slight edge in Michigan.

Predictive effect debated

Conventional wisdom among a significant number of political pundits has always been that if Trump is convicted in any of his criminal cases, his standing in the polls would almost surely drop.

With three of Trump's four criminal cases in what appear to be holding patterns, and his Manhattan hush money case beset by controversy and colorable claims of judicial bias, the durability of that prediction is now in question.

Even so, Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has attempted to remain optimistic, saying to ABC's Martha Raddatz, “Polls go up and down. You and I have been following politics for a long time. But the short answer is to begin to frame the choice for the American people, which is why it's very good news that the first [presidential] debate is in June.”

From strength to strength

However, Trump's momentum only seems to grow stronger, with the former president now putting New York on the table as a possible Republican win in November, an outcome that has not been seen in decades.

Such a result would have been considered unthinkable to most just a short while ago, but Trump's Thursday rally in the South Bronx – which attracted a crowd that surprised even CNN's Kristen Holmes with its size – suggests that perhaps the old rules no longer apply, and millions of Americans are ready to do something different in order to get away from the damage Biden has wrought.