Trump Maintains Leads in Most Critical Swing States

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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump continue to face tight contests in the potentially pivotal “Blue Wall” swing states, according to the latest Morning Consult surveys conducted on behalf of Bloomberg News. That dynamic is true in both head-to-head contests and when third-party contenders are considered, even as independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be losing some steam.

State of the swing-state race

Since a winter ebb, Biden has seen a slight improvement in his standing on the head-to-head ballot in a number of the key states we’re tracking. But it hasn’t yet been enough to earn him more of a lead over his presumptive Republican challenger, whose support has held mostly steady over the eight waves of surveys.

At present, Trump has an advantage in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to our May surveys. He’s meanwhile tied with Biden in Nevada after several months of leading him there, while the incumbent Democrat holds a marginal lead in Michigan, maintaining his edge from last month. Neither candidate’s lead is outside of the surveys’ margins of error.

When third-party contenders are included, the margins between Trump and Biden are nearly identical in most of the states except Nevada, where Trump’s advantage is a bit wider. As with the head-to-head test, the former president leads Biden in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and — more narrowly — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but has no advantage in Michigan.

The leading third-party contender — independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has seen his standing decline across the swing-state map since our tracking began in October.

In our swing-state aggregate, Kennedy has 7% backing — down from 10% in the fall. (Jill Stein and Cornel West, who were also included in the survey, had 1% support.) Kennedy's biggest decline has been in Wisconsin, where his support has fallen from 13% to 6%. This appears to have boosted Biden in the key “blue wall” state, where his support is now strongest among his Democratic base on the multi-candidate ballot test.

Biden still has work to do in solidifying support from Democrats when third-party candidates are thrown into the mix, but trends show Kennedy is losing favor among the swing-state electorate as more voters have formed opinions about him despite remaining most popular among Republican voters.

For the first time in the eight waves of surveys, more swing-state voters hold unfavorable views of Kennedy than favorable ones (40% to 36%). These negative views are driven by nearly half of Democrats, as well as roughly 2 in 5 independents and a third of Republicans, dampening his standing as he fights for ballot access. 

How swing-state voters feel about tech policy

Beyond the presidential horse-race tracking, our latest survey probed swing-state voters’ views on key issues at the intersection of tech and national security, following similar looks at tax and entitlement policies earlier this year. The matter is of relatively low importance for the battleground electorate compared to those two, but it nonetheless has garnered significant attention from policymakers in Washington, especially regarding artificial intelligence.

Washington is mulling its approach to budding AI technologies as experts weigh how they will affect U.S. institutions and American life itself. Despite the talk of how AI might reshape the job market and allow for the festering of disinformation, the biggest concern among swing-state voters is privacy. 

The bulk of swing-state voters (58%) said they expect AI technology to have a negative impact on privacy in the next few years, compared with 48% who said the same of jobs or U.S. elections. The battleground electorate is least concerned about its negative impact on health (25%), and just about a third think it will hurt education.

The bottom line

Trump continues to flex a base advantage over Biden, whose support appears to have the most room to grow over the coming months given his relative weakness with his own party’s voters and among those who supported him in 2020.

This is especially true with the kinds of voters that are traditionally expected to align with the Democratic candidate at higher levels than they currently are in the swing states or nationally — namely young people — who are more likely than their older peers to support Kennedy at the swing-state level. Should Kennedy’s standing in those states continue to fall, Biden may be poised to see a boost in his own support among America’s youngest voters — or at least see their interest in the contest dampen and instead rely on his backing by older Americans against Trump.