Fueled By Poor Marks On The Pandemic, Biden Leads Trump 50-41 Percent In Pennsylvania | Thursday Morning Coffee

By John L. Micek, The Pennsylvania Capital-Star

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July 30, 2020

With less than 100 days to go before this November’s general election, former Vice President Joe Biden holds a 9-point, 50-41 percent, lead over President Donald Trump in a critical battleground state, where voters say they’re disappointed in the 45th president’s job performance and his management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About two in five registered voters (38 percent) say they believe Trump is doing an “excellent’ or “good” job as the nation’s chief executive, according to a new Franklin & Marshall College poll.

Only 29 percent of registered voters say Trump is doing a good or excellent job of managing the pandemic, which has so far, claimed the lives of nearly 150,000 Americans, including 7,162 people in Pennsylvania, according to state Health Department data.

With millions of people out of work, not quite half of the state’s registered voters (48 percent) believe the state is headed in the right direction, down from a high of 57 percent in October 2019, pollsters found. That’s the lowest “right track” result in a poll by Lancaster-based Franklin & Marshall since the 2016 election.

The head-to-head results are slightly higher than the most recent RealClear Politics polling average, which shows Biden holding an average 6.2 percent lead over Trump. They’re in line with a July 9 Monmouth College poll that gave Biden a 10-point edge in a high-turnout election. That lead decreased to 7 percent in a low-turnout model in the Monmouth poll.

Trump’s performance is a “problem directly related to COVID-19,” Franklin & Marshall pollster G. Terry Madonna told the Capital-Star. “Biden’s rise is tied into the spike” in cases.

“Now if [the pandemic] levels off, that would be good for Trump, who has now spoken out about wearing masks and he said it will get worse before it gets better,” Madonna observed.

While the economy has traditionally been Trump’s strong suit (Indeed, 45 percent of respondents rate Trump positively on job creation), Pennsylvania voters are less optimistic about their finances than they were six months ago, the poll found. Two in 10 voters (20 percent) say they’re better off now than they were in January (33 percent). And even fewer (17 percent) expect to be better off next year.

Forty-two percent of respondents said they had a strong or somewhat favorable impression of Trump, compared to 48 percent who said the same of Biden. Trump’s numbers are effectively unchanged from the last Franklin & Marshall poll in January. Biden’s favorables increased by 5 points, from 43 percent in January, the poll shows.

The poll includes some of the predictable geographical splits among voters that helped Trump carry the state by barely a percentage point in 2016.

Biden holds leads in Philadelphia and its deep blue suburbs, and a commanding advantage on his home turf in northeastern Pennsylvania. Trump holds a 5-point edge in southwestern Pennsylvania and Allegheny County, though Biden could close the gap among undecided voters whose ranks surely include independents who sided with Trump four years ago.

Trump continues to run strong in sparsely populated northwestern Pennsylvania, and leads in central Pennsylvania.

Conducted from July 20-26, the Franklin & Marshall poll sampled the opinions of 667 registered voters, including 324 Democrats, 271 Republicans, and 72 independents. The poll has a margin of error of 5.5 percent.

This story was originally published by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. For more stories from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, visit PennCapital-Star.com.