A New York Times/Siena College poll shows President Donald Trump narrowly trailing Democratic White House nominee Joe Biden in Iowa, slightly leading in Texas and tied in Georgia.
Trump carried all three states in 2016 on his way to the White House.
The poll was conducted by phone among likely voters Sept. 16-22, with a margin of error of four percentage points for Texas and five in Iowa and Georgia.
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Biden is leading Trump in Iowa (45%-42%), while Trump leads in Texas (46% to 42%). Both are tied in Georgia at 45% each.
“Mr. Trump’s vulnerability even in conservative-leaning states underscores just how precarious his political position is, less than six weeks before Election Day,” the Times said. “While he and Mr. Biden are competing aggressively for traditional swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the poll suggests that Mr. Biden has assembled a coalition formidable enough to jeopardize Mr. Trump even in historically Republican parts of the South and Midwest.”
A new poll conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also shows the presidential race in Georgia tied, with Trump and Biden tied at 47% apiece, with an additional 1% of voters backing Libertarian Jo Jorgensen.
A new Monmouth University poll showed Trump leading Biden (47%-46%). That poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 17-21 with 402 Georgia registered voters. Jorgensen tallied 2%, and another 4% are undecided.
Georgia has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1996.
Trump is slated to visit Georgia on Friday, likely for a campaign event in metro Atlanta that promotes the Black Voices for Trump initiative that he launched in Georgia in November. On Thursday, the president was scheduled to visit North Carolina and Florida, while Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to campaign in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
On Thursday, congressional Republicans pushed back against Trump’s answer to a question about whether he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.
“We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said Wednesday at a news conference. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, “If Republicans lose, we will accept the result. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Joe Biden, I will accept that result.”
Biden was asked about Trump’s comment after landing in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday night.
“What country are we in?” Biden asked incredulously, adding: “I’m being facetious. Look, he says the most irrational things. I don’t know what to say about it. But it doesn’t surprise me.”
Trump has been pressing a months-long campaign against mail-in voting this November by tweeting and speaking out critically about the practice. More states are encouraging mail-in voting to keep voters safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
The president, who uses mail-in voting himself, has tried to distinguish between states that automatically send mail ballots to all registered voters and those, including Florida, that send them only to voters who request a mailed ballot.
“You’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly,” Trump said. “There’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control, you know it, and you know, who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
The five states that already have such balloting have had time to ramp up their systems, while four states newly adopting it — California, New Jersey, Nevada and Vermont — have not. Washington, D.C., has also newly adopted it.
Of those nine states, only Nevada is a battleground, worth six electoral votes and likely to be pivotal only in a national presidential deadlock.
California, New Jersey, Vermont and D.C. are overwhelmingly Democratic and likely to be won by Biden.
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