Polls show Trump leads Biden in 5 battleground states, including Georgia

The latest New York Times/Siena College 2024 presidential election poll shows Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden in Georgia and four other key battleground states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

A dive into the crosstabs of the poll released over the weekend shows even greater concerns for Biden’s reelection hopes.

Biden trails the former president 49-43 among likely Georgia voters, just outside the survey’s margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. He’s showing significant weakness among core Democratic supporters.

Some 19% of Black voters — who make up the backbone of the Democratic voting base in Georgia — support Trump’s comeback bid. Republican presidential contenders typically register about 10% support from Black voters in Georgia.

And roughly 9% of Biden’s supporters in the 2020 election, in which he carried the state by fewer than 12,000 votes, now say they back Trump. That’s compared to 2% of Trump supporters in 2020 who indicate they’ll now vote for the Democratic incumbent.

Both Biden and Trump are deeply unpopular, with unfavorable ratings surpassing 50%. But some 60% of voters say they disapprove of Biden’s job performance, including 20% of Democrats and about two-thirds of independents.

Biden’s age continues to be one of his biggest vulnerabilities. An overwhelming 69% of Georgia voters said the 80-year-old is “just too old to be an effective president.” That’s an opinion shared by a majority of every demographic polled, including 52% of Biden’s supporters.

Quentin Fulks, the Georgia native who serves as a top Biden deputy, said the poll isn’t cause for concern in an interview Sunday with MSNBC’s Symone Sanders.

“We’re focused on laying this foundational base of drawing that contrast using the innovative techniques that we are doing right now to figure out where to reach voters most effectively so that we can head into 2024 and win in November,” Fulks said. “But, no, we don’t care about a poll in November of 2023.”