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New poll shows close races for president, Senate in Arizona

Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) at an event in Mesa, Ariz., on Aug. 11, 2020.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) at an event in Mesa, Ariz., on Aug. 11, 2020. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

A Monmouth University poll released Thursday shows a tight race for the White House and Senate in Arizona, a state that Trump won four years ago but that has become a fiercely contested battleground.

The poll shows that 48 percent of registered voters in the state support Biden, while 44 percent back Trump. Those numbers have changed only slightly since March, when Biden took 46 percent to Trump’s 43 percent.

The latest survey was conducted Sept. 11-15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

In the Senate race, the poll shows Democrat Mark Kelly winning the support of 50 percent of registered voters, while 44 percent back Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.). Kelly has a wide lead among Democrats (97 percent) and independents (60 percent), while McSally is supported by 88 percent of Republicans.

McSally ran for Senate in 2018 but lost to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. Gov. Doug Ducey (R) later appointed McSally to the state’s other Senate seat, which was formerly held by Republican Sen. John McCain.

“Kelly is simply well-liked by voters and McSally already has a recent loss under her belt. The advantage of her appointed incumbency seems to be providing limited benefit,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

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From 30,000 feet, the presidential race looks much as it did when we first launched our presidential election forecast in August. Joe Biden has about a 3 in 4 chance of winning compared to President Trump’s roughly 1 in 4 shot, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast. Biden’s chances did dip down to a 2 in 3 shot after the Republican National Convention on Aug. 31, but overall, his chances of winning have hung out in the low- to mid-70 percent range. By contrast, Trump’s chances have mostly bounced around in the mid- to high-20s.

2020-pres-general-change-2.png

But underneath the topline numbers, there has still been some fairly big movement in a handful of key battleground states, and the news has been mostly good for Biden. If we look at how much Biden’s odds have changed in states where both he and Trump have at least a 1 in 10 shot of winning since we launched the forecast on Aug. 12, Biden has improved his chances in 17 of 20 states. And in some cases, Biden’s improvement has been considerable — +15 percentage points in Minnesota, +12 points in Arizona and +10 points in Wisconsin, for instance. By comparison, Trump’s odds have really only improved in Florida, although he hasn’t lost much ground in states such as Georgia and Ohio, which may signal that Biden’s electoral gains will not be that expansive. (Trump still leads in Texas, for instance, despite Biden’s improvement there.)

Biden’s odds improved in most battleground states

Change in Joe Biden’s chances of winning in states where he or Donald Trump has at least a 10 percent chance of winning, between forecast launch on Aug. 12 and Sept. 16 (as of 9:30 a.m. ET)

  BIDEN’S CHANCE OF WINNING  
STATE AUG. 12 SEPT. 16 CHANGE
Minnesota 71.8% 86.6% +14.8
Arizona 55.2 67.6 +12.4
Wisconsin 69.8 79.9 +10.0
Michigan 81.2 86.9 +5.7
Maine 77.3 82.6 +5.3
North Carolina 49.0 52.9 +3.9
Nevada 76.7 80.2 +3.5
Pennsylvania 73.4 75.8 +2.4
Texas 29.1 31.4 +2.3
Iowa 31.4 33.5 +2.0
Colorado 84.9 86.4 +1.5
New Hampshire 71.6 73.0 +1.3
Georgia 34.3 35.4 +1.2
Montana 12.1 13.0 +1.0
Alaska 19.0 19.6 +0.7
Ohio 44.8 45.2 +0.4
Mississippi 12.8 12.9 +0.1
South Carolina 12.8 12.8 +0.0
Missouri 12.9 10.3 -2.6
Florida 64.1 60.7 -3.4

But Biden’s improvement in Arizona is particularly noteworthy as Arizona is a cornerstone of most Electoral College maps in which Trump wins. That is, if Trump carries the state, he wins the election 59 percent of time, according to our forecast; but if Biden wins Arizona, Trump has less than a 7 percent chance of winning overall. And three polls released in the last few days show Biden ahead in the Grand Canyon State, although by varying margins. A CBS News/YouGov poll found him up by 3 points while a Gravis Marketing surveygave him just a 2-point lead over Trump. But an OH Predictive Insights pollgave Biden a much larger 10-point advantage, 52 percent to 42 percent.

Meanwhile, Biden’s improvement in Minnesota is also bad news for Trump, as the campaign has long viewed Minnesota as a potential target to expand the map — the president only lost the state by about 2 points in 2016. However, Minnesota seems to be steadily moving away from Trump. An ABC News/Washington Post survey released today gave Biden a sizable 16-point edge, 57 percent to 41 percent, among likely voters. And two separate polls released this weekend by CBS News/YouGov and the New York Times/Siena College each found Biden ahead by 9 points in Minnesota, 50 percent to 41 percent. Still, a Morning Consult survey released yesterday might buoy the Trump campaign’s hopes of breaking through in Minnesota, as it put Biden’s lead at only 4 points. And Trump is doing better in Wisconsin, although he’s still an underdog there as recent polls suggest Biden has a fairly sizable advantage. A CNN/SSRS survey released yesterday gave Biden a 10-point lead, while an ABC News/Washington Post survey out today gave Biden a 6-point edge. And this past weekend, the New York Times/Siena College found Biden up by 5 points there.

Florida is the only battleground state where Trump’s odds have increased appreciably, but that’s an important silver lining for the president, as winning Florida is make or break for Trump’s chances of winning the election. If Trump wins the Sunshine State, he wins the presidency in 57 percent of our forecast’s simulations, while a Biden win there would give Trump less than a 2 percent shot at victory. And at this point, Florida polls continue to give Trump a decent shot at winning the state, although they haven’t been universally positive. Perhaps most notably, a poll released on Tuesday by Monmouth University found Biden up by 3 to 5 points among likely voters, depending on turnout. However, another poll out yesterday from Florida Atlantic University found the two candidates tied in a dead heat at 50 percent after undecided voters were pushed to pick a candidate, so at this point, Florida remains ultra-competitive with Trump gaining ground there.

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6 hours ago, Tiberius said:

Could be a lot of money flowing into Maine CD2 at the end of this thing.  Donnie is going to need every EC vote he can get his greasy little fingers on.  AZ numbers are borderline shocking.  And Collins looks like she’s pretty close to toast.   Gonna be a lot of ads that show her with Trump as we wind this thing down. 

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All summer long, we’ve been warned: Yes, Joe Biden is ahead in the polls — but so was Hillary Clinton.

There’s one key difference that’s often overlooked, though. Biden is much closer to the magic 50 percent mark — both nationally and in key Electoral College battleground states. That puts Trump in a significantly worse situation, needing to not only attract skeptical undecided voters but also peel supporters away from Biden, whose poll numbers have been remarkably durable.

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And the president is running out of time for both.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics average, Biden is sitting at 49.3 percent in national surveys and has a 6.2 percentage point lead over President Donald Trump. That’s significantly higher than Clinton’s 44.9 percent mark this time four years ago, which was good for only a 1 point lead. 

It’s the same story in many of the battleground states: Biden is at or within 2 points of majority support in enough states to lock down an Electoral College victory, compared with Clinton’s low- to mid-40s scores in mid-September 2016 in the same states, some of which she would end up losing as late-deciding voters went decisively for Trump.

“One of the worries that kept me up at night in ’16 was we just always felt like there was a bigger number of undecideds. And if they broke predominantly in a direction, then the whole thing could change,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist and the executive director of a pro-Biden super PAC. “I don’t think there was a single poll in Florida that had [Clinton] over 48 percent. I think that was the case in a lot of places.”

 

Joe Biden

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