With two weeks before Election Day, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows Democrat Joe Biden with a nine-point lead over President Donald Trump.
The poll, conducted Oct. 15-18 and with a 3.4 percentage point margin of error, shows the former vice president with a 50% backing among likely voters to Trump’s 41%, with 3% divided over other candidates. It was conducted among 987 likely voters.
Trump and Biden are scheduled to debate for the second time Thursday night, offering the GOP incumbent president one final time to make the case that Biden is unfit for the job and tout his administration’s accomplishments.
Thursday night’s debate would have been the third between the two men. Trump and Biden were scheduled to debate Oct. 15, but Trump rejected a last-minute change from the commission that would have made the debate virtual, instead of an in-person, town hall format. The nonpartisan commission cited a need “to protect the health and safety of all involved with the second presidential debate” in the wake of Trump’s recent bout with the coronavirus.
Even though Trump trails in national polls and fundraising, Republicans see their progress signing up voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and other states as a bright spot. Democrats appear to have been set back by their decision to curb in-person voter registration drives during much of the pandemic. Republicans are touting their success bringing in new voters who could ramp up turnout and deliver the White House to their candidate.
“The best thing for voter registration is enthusiasm for a candidate and the infrastructure,” said Nick Trainer, director of battleground strategy for Trump’s reelection campaign. “The lack of enthusiasm for Biden coupled with the lack of structure is the reason they’re not doing what they did in the past.”
In Florida, Republicans netted 146,644 voters over Democrats since the pandemic hit in March, leaving Democrats with their smallest overall lead in party registrations since the state began tracking them in 1972. In Pennsylvania, which Trump won with 44,000 votes in 2016, the GOP added 103,171 more voters since November than Democrats.
Even in Arizona, where Democrats have steadily been chipping away at the GOP’s advantage among registered voters due to a growing number of young Latino voters, Republicans added 30,000 more voters than Democrats since mid-August.
Democrats argue that Republican gains are partly illusory: Some of the GOP registrants are former Democratic voters who have been voting for Republicans but have not updated their registration until now. They also note young voters, who lean heavily Democratic, increasingly register as unaffiliated with either party, which helps pad the GOP’s advantage on paper but it might not help on Election Day,
David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Republicans were “cherry picking” voter registration statistics. Still, he noted: “Democrats are taking nothing for granted and pulling out all the stops to reach every voter we need.”
The Republican National Committee, according to Fox News, is spending $25 million on TV ads in battleground states ahead of Nov. 3.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
