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Before the 2024 presidential election was turned on its ear (sorry, bad pun) via criminal convictions, game-changing debates and – most recently – an attempted assassination, former U.S. president Donald Trump was already beating incumbent Joe Biden in nearly every critical battleground state.
In recent weeks – and recent days – his lead has only expanded.
On Thursday morning (July 18, 2024), Emerson College released its first swing state survey data since a spectacular failure by the U.S. Secret Service allowed a 20-year-old Pennsylvanian to squeeze off at least nine rounds at Trump last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to Emerson’s data, Trump has expanded his lead over Biden in seven key electoral battlegrounds – although the pollster overseeing the survey believes that has more to do with the incumbent’s waning popularity than any potential sympathy for Trump.
And judging by some reactions to the attempted assassination, he’s probably correct …
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“Recent polling shows Biden losing support more significantly than Trump gaining it since the attempted assassination,” Emerson poll executive director Spencer Kimball noted. “This raises questions about whether Biden’s decline is still influenced by the debate or if Trump has reached his support ceiling.”
Kimball added that “when third-party candidates are added to the ballot test, Trump either maintains or extends his advantage in the national poll and 6 of 7 swing states.”
Including these third-party candidates, Trump leads Biden in Arizona (+10), Georgia (+5), Michigan (+3), Nevada (+3), Pennsylvania (+6) and Wisconsin (+3) – all states the incumbent won in 2020. Assuming those results were to hold, Trump would win a whopping 316 electoral votes (at least) this fall – well above the 270 necessary to secure the presidency.
No wonder Democrats’ “soft coup” against Biden is regaining momentum, right?
Emerson’s polling was conducted on July 15-16, 2024. Of interest? It was sponsored by “Democrats for the Next Generation,” a decidedly left-of-center partisan organization.
Keep it tuned to this outlet as we continue to parse the polls ahead of the November 5, 2024 election – now just 109 days away.
BANNER VIA: GETTY IMAGES
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina and before that he was a bass guitarist and dive bar bouncer. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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