What Polls In Arizona, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina Say About Presidential, Senate Races

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll Friday indicated President Trump is trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden by a wide margin while an EPIC-MRA poll gives Biden a similar edge in Michigan. The NYT/Siena poll also gives Biden a slight edge in North Carolina.

A Rasmussen Reports poll indicated 53% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, showing steady improvement in recent weeks.

The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls gave Biden a 0.9-point lead as of Wednesday.

The NYT/Siena poll, conducted Sept. 10-16, gave Biden a 17-point lead in Maine, indicating he’s ahead of Trump 55% to 38%. Maine went for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, 47.8% to 44.9% for Trump. In Arizona, which Trump won by 3.5 points in 2016, Biden leads by 9 points, 49% to 40%. Both the Arizona and Maine results were outside the margins of error, 4.1% and 5.1%, respectively.

In North Carolina, the race remains a tossup, with Biden leading Trump by a point, 45% to 44%, the poll indicated. The error margin, however, was 4.3 points.

The poll also indicated Republican lawmakers will have a hard time in those states against their Democratic rivals, with Democrats leading incumbent GOP senators by at least 5 points and opening the possibility of a Democratic takeover of the Senate.

NYT/Siena polls in the past two weeks indicated Trump is lagging in seven battleground states, largely because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The polls indicated, however, voters give Trump credit for his handling of the economy and law-and-order issues.

Arizona voter Joseph Seoane, 67, who supported Trump in 2016, told the Times he’ll vote for Biden this time because Trump has proved he “can’t handle” the job, particularly the pandemic.

“There are certain things we can’t play down,” he said, referring to Trump’s admission that he downplayed the severity of the coronavirus early on. “And now we have all these victims.” As of late morning Friday, the death toll from COVID-19 stood at nearly 198,000.

The EPIC-MRA poll, conducted Sept. 10-15, indicated Michigan voters prefer Biden over Trump, 48% to 40%. Trump won the state in 2016 by 0.3 points, little more than 10,000 votes in a state where more than 5 million were cast. The poll indicates little movement from a month ago. The margin of error was 4 points.

The poll also indicated little more than a quarter of Michigan voters (27%) think the country is on the right track, versus 67% who said the country is not. Forty-two percent said they have a favorable opinion of the president compared to 52% who said they have a favorable opinion of Biden.

The Rasmussen poll indicated Trump’s approval rating is increasing, from a low of 46% on Aug. 6 to 53% as of Friday. His disapproval rating has fallen to 46% from a high of 54% July 28.