Donald Trump is beating Joe Biden by 15 points in Michigan six months before the presidential election, one poll has shown.
According to a Kaplan Strategies survey of 804 people, the former president is leading the incumbent by 51 percent to 36 percent in the key battleground state. The margin of error for the survey was 3.5 percentage points.
In March, Biden and Trump won enough primary races to secure, respectively, the Democratic and Republican nominations in the 2024 presidential election. Thus far, polls have shown that the results will be tight as the pair are statistically tied in most polls or enjoying only marginal leads.
Swing states are important as due to the Electoral College system of voting, they may determine the winner of the election.
In 2016 Trump took Michigan, but Biden flipped it back in 2020, suggesting that the result in 2024 will be tight in this state.
Newsweek contacted Biden's campaign outside of usual business hours to comment on this story.
Other polls have also suggested Michigan will go blue. According to an Emerson College/The Hill poll released last week, Biden is trailing Trump marginally in Michigan (44 percent to 45 percent). The poll also found he is behind the Republican in six other swing states.
However, an April poll by Bloomberg News and Morning Consult found that Biden is ahead of Trump in Michigan, 47 percent to 45 percent. However, it found that Trump is polling ahead of Biden in six other key swing states.
Meanwhile, April betting odds from Polymarket, an online prediction platform where users can place yes or no bets on world events, have the incumbent president poised to beat Trump in Michigan (57 percent to 44 percent).
Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight ranks Kaplan Strategies 82nd in its list of pollsters by historical track record and methodological transparency. It gives it a poll score of -0/9.
With the election months out, polls are likely to fluctuate in this manner. Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at City University of New York, previously told Newsweek that the race was "very close."
"The polling over the last several months indicates this is a very close race. I wouldn't read too much into any one or two polls at this point. The trend seems to be that the campaign will be a very tight one and I suspect the polls will reflect that until November."
Speaking to Newsweek previously, Michael Tyler, the Biden-Harris 2024 communications director, claimed general polling "consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden."
"Whether it's in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided," Tyler said.
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Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and ... Read more
