Joe Biden's Polling False Dawn?

Joe Biden's polling success ahead of the presidential election may have been short-lived, as a series of polls now suggest Donald Trump is in the lead.

In March, Biden and Trump won enough primary races to secure, respectively, the Democratic and Republican nominations in the 2024 presidential election, and recent polling indicated Biden would win the race.

In one poll, the Democratic incumbent had a 9-point lead over Trump among actual voters. He also saw success in a poll conducted with Republican pollsters.

However, polling averages compiled by RealClearPolling and FiveThirtyEight, ABC News' polling analysis site, now indicate that Trump is narrowly ahead nationally and in battleground states.

Newsweek has contacted representatives for Trump and Biden for comment via email.

A CNN poll of 1,212 people conducted by SSRS, an independent research company, between April 18 and 23, found that 49 percent of registered voters supported Trump, while 43 percent supported Biden.

A poll of 745 likely voters conducted by the University of North Florida between April 8 and 20 found that 47 percent said they would vote for Trump, while 45 percent said they would vote for Biden.

The results of a Pew Research Center poll were even closer. The survey of 7,166 registered voters, conducted between April 8 and 14, found that the candidates were virtually tied—with 49 percent of respondents in favor or leaning toward Trump, and 48 percent supporting or leaning toward Biden.

An April poll by Bloomberg News and Morning Consult also indicated a major problem for the president: Trump was polling ahead in six key swing states, by 6 points overall.

As these swing states may determine the result of the election, these polls are arguably more important than national polls—though experts have cautioned against certitude about the election's outcome, as polling day is still more than six months away and the polls remain tight, meaning that in most cases, the candidates are statistically tied.

"The election right now is a toss-up," Scott Lucas, an international politics professor at University College Dublin in Ireland, told Newsweek.

"There are some polls that have Biden slightly ahead nationally. There are some that have Trump ahead nationally. In the key swing states right now, Trump has a slight lead," he continued, adding, "But there are so many factors in play here."

Lucas said the candidates' health, Trump's legal problems and his VP pick were key issues that would emerge as the campaign continued and could affect voters on polling day.

"There's just no way of telling which way this election is going to go," he said, adding that polls would continue to be close until November.

"People need to stop following the polls," Lucas said. "They need to stop treating this as horse-race politics and focus on the issues and definitely should not try to predict this outcome."

Mark Shanahan, an associate professor of politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K., said the party primary season had finished more quickly than usual, leading pollsters to try to predict the general election earlier than usual.

"One of the two candidates will win unless age or the law catches up with them first, and positions on both sides are very entrenched, with a very small tranche of undecideds in half a dozen key states still likely to decide the final result," Shanahan said. "Fortunes will wax and wane in the next three months. Biden needs an economic uptick, and Trump needs to stay out of prison. Neither is guaranteed."

Thomas Gift, who heads the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, said reading too much into polls was "a fool's errand."

"Polls are so variable at this point that the only consistent insight we can glean from them is that Biden and Trump are neck and neck—not only nationally but in key swing states," he said. "Trying to read too much into any one poll, or even set of polls, five months out from the election is a fool's errand."