Outspoken Donald Trump niece Mary Trump celebrated the former president "losing ground" to President Joe Biden in some recent polls in a new Substack post she shared on Thursday.
Biden and Trump are set to square off for the White House in November, with each having received enough delegates to secure their respective party's nomination, leading to a rematch of the 2020 presidential race. Polls have pointed to a tight election, though Trump had a lead in a number of polls at the beginning of the year.
Biden, however, has gained ground on Trump in some recent polls, including several in the handful of critical swing states that will ultimately decide who will sit in the Oval Office next January.
This shift in polling sparked celebration from Trump's niece, a frequent critic of the former president, who included Biden's rise in polls in a Substack post titled "7 Reasons Democrats Can Celebrate."
Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, told Newsweek on Friday that present polling only shows "at best very general information for an election that is expected to be close like it was in 2020 and 2016 in the electoral vote," as the election remains months away.
"The polls will not start providing possibly a bit better information until starting in June as more people start paying attention to the election, and then much more so after both party's conventions by September they can start becoming more indicative," he said.
Mary Trump pressed Democrats, saying that "now is not the time for complacency," while reminding that polls are a "snapshot in time." But, she still celebrated what she called the "significant progress" Biden has made in polling.
"While I will likely spend the rest of my life trying to understand how we got here, how even ONE human being not on Donald's payroll could think he should be back in the White House, what these data do show is that President Biden has the momentum right now, while Donald is, finally, losing ground," Mary Trump posted.
She also warned voters that the polls are "still too close" and that she finds it "inconceivable that an incompetent, criminal, cruel, autocratic wannabe like Donald is a candidate at all, let alone a viable one."
She pointed to seven national polls that show Biden with a narrow lead.
An Emerson College poll, conducted among 1,350 voters from March 5-6, found Biden and Trump virtually tied. But when undecided voters were asked who they were leaning toward, Biden held a slight lead of 51 percent to Trump's 49 percent. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
A Florida Atlantic University poll, conducted among 1,053 voters from March 15-17, found Biden with 47 percent support compared to Trump's 45 percent. That survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
She also pointed to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll that showed "Biden has narrowed the gap almost across the board" including in key midwestern battle ground states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Other recent surveys, however, show Trump maintaining his narrow lead over Biden.
A Fox News poll, conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research, found Trump with a 5-point lead over Biden. Trump won 50 percent of support from respondents, while 45 percent said they would vote for Biden. The poll was conducted from March 22-25 among 1,094 voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign for comment via email.
Updated 3/29/24, 3:14 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Robert Y. Shapiro.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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