Democrat voters should be ready to say, “bye bye Biden”.
Former President Donald Trump is running neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden in New Hampshire, according to a recent poll, overturning an earlier advantage Biden held by as much as 8 percentage points earlier this year.
The NH Journal poll, released on Monday, indicates that Trump has a slight lead over Biden, with 36.6% to Biden’s 36.5%. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trailing behind with 14.6%. This marks a significant shift from a January USA TODAY–Boston Globe-Suffolk University poll, where Biden led Trump 42% to 34%, and Kennedy had 8%.
Although Trump’s current lead over Biden falls within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.33 percentage points, it underscores another challenging survey for the president.
Trump appears to be ahead of Biden across all age groups, except for those aged 65 and older. Among party affiliations, Kennedy seems to be drawing more support from Democrats, at 11.2%, compared to 6.6% from Republicans. This siphoning of votes has raised concerns for both the Biden and Trump campaigns.
Among independent voters, Biden, Trump, and Kennedy have nearly equal support. Biden holds a slight plurality with 27.5%, while Trump has 24.2%, and Kennedy 23.2%. Notably, a significant portion of the electorate, 12.4%, including 25.1% of independents, indicated that they do not intend to support any of the candidates.
In the 2016 election, Trump narrowly lost New Hampshire by less than 3,000 votes, approximately 0.4 percentage points. However, in 2020, Biden won the state by a more considerable margin of about 60,000 votes, or nearly 7.5 percentage points. Currently, the Cook Political Report classifies New Hampshire as “likely Democratic.”
Despite this, Trump’s campaign has expressed confidence in making gains in traditionally Democratic states, including Minnesota and Virginia. Recent polls indicate that Trump is leading in several key swing states, suggesting a potentially competitive race ahead.