2024 Polls: Trump leads Biden in five key battleground states

Donald Trump is ahead of President Joe Biden in five swing states with a year left to the 2024 election.

When Mr Biden won in 2020, he won so after pitching himself as the electable candidate in the Democratic primary – the man who could take down then-President Trump.

Nearly three years into his presidency, Mr Biden is trailing Mr Trump, not because his predecessor is surging in popularity, Mr Trump is as unpopular as ever with American voters,  but because the oldest president in US history is seeing his ratings plummet.

In the six battleground states where the 2024 election is likely to be decided, Mr Biden only leads in one – Wisconsin, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College. Mr Trump is ahead in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan, wins that would probably hand him the 270 electoral votes required for Mr Trump to return to the White House.

In the important swing states, Mr Biden is behind Mr Trump on average by four per cent, as Mr Trump receives 48 per cent and Mr Biden 44 per cent.

Nikki Haley has clearly taken second place in the 2024 GOP race, but remains a distant threat to Donald Trump in South Carolina, according to a new poll of the early primary state conducted by CNN/SRSS.

Ms Haley previously served as the state’s governor, and made a name for herself there as an early adopter of the conservative culture war agenda while also winning support from some Democrats for her response to a massacre at a historic Black church. As a presidential candidate, she has battled Ron DeSantis for the runner-up slot for months, and appears to have some momentum behind her campaign while the Florida governor slips in some polling.

At the same time, however, Donald Trump has seen his support grow, not shrink, while he remains the clear frontrunner for the nomination. That reality was also reflected in the CNN poll, which showed Mr Trump leading Ms Haley by a margin of 53-22. Mr DeSantis registered support from 11 per cent of respondents in the state.

It’s a poll result that will have Ms Haley and her donors encouraged heading into the third GOP debate, while at the same time cognisant of the reality of the contest: This is Donald Trump’s race to lose.

Mr Trump is giving his opponents no free opportunities to overtake him. He is not scheduled to attend the third Republican primary debate, set to be hosted by NBC News next week, as he continues to avoid the prospect of a direct face-off between himself and Ms Haley, Mr DeSantis or ex-New Jersey Gov Chris Christie, who has been publicly itching for a confrontation with his former ally. The tactic is a direct reversal of his 2016 strategy, when Mr Trump relied on his bullish and insult-slinging GOP primary debate performances to vault his campaign into the lead.

Democratic Rep Ruben Gallego is the polling leader in the Arizona Senate race which also includes possible GOP nominee, former gubernatorial nominee, and staunch election denier and Trump supporter Kari Lake and Independent incumbent Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat.

National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen Steve Daines revealed the national GOP polling during a presentation on Tuesday, according to Punchbowl News.

He noted that Ms Sinema is pulling votes from the Republicans and not from her former party.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said that Ms Lake is set to win the GOP nomination and that they should get behind her as a party.

The poll showed Mr Gallego at 41 per cent, Ms Sinema at 17 per cent, and Ms Lake at 37 per cent.

Donald Trump is leading in the early primary state of South Carolina, with the state’s former Governor Nikki Haley nabbing the second spot even as she remains far behind the former president.

A new poll by CNN and SSRS revealed that 53 per cent of likely GOP primary voters said that Mr Trump was their top choice, with Ms Haley supported by 22 per cent, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis backed by 11 per cent.

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott comes in at six per cent support ahead of the 24 February primary in the Palmetto State following contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.

Donald Trump has filed suit against Michigan’s secretary of state as he hopes to thwart a growing left-leaning legal movement aimed at blocking him from appearing on the 2024 ballot.

The effort, which draws its legal grounds from the 14th Amendment’s ban on supporters of a rebellion or insurrection from taking part in elected office, is a historic effort which could seriously challenge Mr Trump’s ability to win the Electoral College were it to succeed in even a single state.

Mr Trump is facing lawsuits aimed at blocking him from the ballot in a number of states, several of which were filed by the Washington-based ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The Michigan suit, filed on Monday and first reported by The Detroit News, comes despite the Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, stating that she would allow Mr Trump to be on the ballot unless a court were to intervene and prevent it.

A court hearing another suit in Colorado with the same goal began hearing arguments on Monday after the former president sought unsuccessfully to see that case dismissed.

As Donald Trump looks increasingly likely to be the 2024 Republican nominee for president, it continues to look more and more plausible that there could be a serious effort to keep him off the ballot entirely.

Following his presidency ending in a bloody battle on Capitol Hill, Mr Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party, at least among its primary voting electorate.

Recent polls show the ex-president supported by as many as six in 10 of GOP primary voters nationally, while he also continues to hold commanding leads in early primary and caucus states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

But winning a primary election is one thing; winning a general election is another. And as Mr Trump consolidates his support within the GOP, some politicians and constitutional law experts alike are growing more vocal about the possibility of simply denying the Republican Party’s candidate from appearing on the ballot next November at all.

Support for President Joe Biden among Arab Americans is dropping amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as Mr Biden strongly supports his top ally in the Middle East.

A poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) has revealed that not only has support for the president dropped, but the number of reported incidents of discrimination has gone up.

After the 7 October attacks, more than 1,400 people in Israel have died, while 8,000 people have died in Gaza following Israeli counterattacks.

Mr Biden’s “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel has led to the “dramatic plummeting of Arab American voter support for President Biden” among the 3.7 million Arab Americans in the US, according to AAI.

“Support among Arab American voters for Biden has plummeted from 59% in 2020 to 17% today,” the institute noted.

For the first time in the 26 years that the AAI has conducted polling, a majority of Arab Americans didn’t prefer the Democratic Party – and 40 per cent said they would back former President Donald Trump in 2024. That’s a five-point increase compared to 2020 and the highest percentage ever in polling shows Arab American support of the GOP.

According to The Guardian, the president and co-founder of AAI, James Zogby, said: “It’s important for our organizing that we know how the community is positioning itself in this. And it’s important for us to let the administration know – you’re at risk of losing this particular component group of the community.”

Mr Manchin, a former governor, has declined to say if he’ll run for senate re-election next year as the state’s popular current governor, Republican Jim Justice, is gearing up to take him on. Mr Manchin has also not ruled out an independent bid for president.

Even as Mr Manchin is one of the most unpopular senators in the country, his approval rating in West Virginia increased by four per cent since the first quarter of this year and his disapproval rating declined by seven points, according to Morning Consult.

The boost in popularity mostly came from Republican voters, but as a group, they’re still much more likely to approve of rival Mr Justice.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are tied at 36.5 per cent in a hypothetical four-way race including two independents – Robert F Kennedy Jr and Cornel West.

In a Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll shared on Sunday, in a survey that included a thousand registered voters, 366 said they would back Mr Biden and another 366 said they would support Mr Trump.

Mr Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who launched a bid to win the Democratic nomination before restarting his campaign as an independent, got 13 per cent, while Mr West, a professor who started out as a Green Party candidate but is now also an independent, received four per cent.

Eight per cent said they were undecided and two per cent declined to give an answer.

The support for independents is unusually high and can affect both Mr Biden’s and Mr Trump’s chances of winning the White House again.

Mr Kennedy’s policy stances overlap with both Mr Biden and Mr Trump – such as his support for the middle class for Mr Biden and his isolationist foreign policy and anti-vaccine stance, which has resonated with Trump supporters even as the former president has voiced support for vaccines.