Donald Trump's Fortunes Reversed in Two Battleground States
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump gives remarks to the press at the National Republican Senatorial Committee building on June 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. The former president is now marginally behind Joe Biden in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Donald Trump has lost his marginal leads in two key battleground states, less than five months before the presidential election.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to face incumbent President Joe Biden in November, and polls have so far shown that the results of the 2020 White House rematch will be tight, with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys.
However, according to the VoteHub tracker, which aggregates the averages of polls by highly rated pollsters given a rating of "A" or "B" in the past 28 days, Trump is now behind Biden in Michigan and Wisconsin for the first time during this election cycle.
In March, Biden trailed Trump by -3.7 percentage points in Michigan, the voting tracker showed. But after closing the gap to 0.7 percent in April, the current White House occupant took the lead in May, claiming a 1 percentage point lead over his Republican rival. This has now declined to a lead of 0.8 percent as of June but is still a slim lead on Trump.
In 2016, Trump took Michigan, but Biden flipped it back to blue in 2020. Democrats have won the state in seven of the last eight presidential contests.
Trump has seemingly also lost support in Wisconsin. In late May, a Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey of 4,962 registered voters in seven swing states showed Trump narrowly leading in the state by 47 percent to 46 percent of the vote share.
But according to VoteHub, Biden is now ahead of Trump in Wisconsin by 0.2 percent. Trump attracted criticism last week when he reportedly made negative comments about Milwaukee, Wisconsin's most populous city. Experts have suggested that these comments may affect the Republican's chances of success in the state.
Trump won an upset victory in Wisconsin in 2016, carrying the state by less than 1 percent. In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin with 49.4 percent of the vote to Trump's 48.8. Before 2016, Democrats had won the seven previous presidential elections in Wisconsin.
Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and Biden for comment by email outside normal business hours.
Battleground state polls are important as the election will likely be determined by a handful of key swing states, as the Electoral College system awards each state a certain number of votes based on population.
A presidential candidate must secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success.
However, with less than five months to go until polling day, it is still too early to call the results of the election.
On June 27, Biden and Trump are set to square off in Atlanta for the first of two scheduled debates ahead of the general election on November 5.
Start your unlimited Newsweek trial