Joe Biden continues to lose ground in Pennsylvania, even in polls that have historically been quite favorable to him. Biden’s most favorable pollster in the Keystone State is Quinnipiac, which just weeks ago was claiming he held a 13-point lead. Its latest poll has shown President Donald Trump gaining 2 points and Biden losing 3 points, dropping him to an 8-point lead.
No other poll is as friendly to Biden as the latest Quinnipiac poll, but they all show Biden leading in Pennsylvania. The other polls show him up by 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, and 7 points. Weeks ago, many polls showed him up by much more.
Just nine days ago, the RealClearPolitics average had Biden with a 7.3 percent lead in the race. Now the average is 4.2 percent.
That’s a lot of ground for Trump to make up in two weeks, particularly with voting already happening in the commonwealth, but it’s not insurmountable for the president. Four years ago at this time, Hillary Clinton was up by 4.4 points in Pennsylvania. In other words, Trump is doing slightly better in Pennsylvania now than he was doing against Clinton — and he won Pennsylvania four years ago.
There are many indicators that Biden doesn’t believe the Quinnipiac polls, including that, according to the Wall Street Journal’s national political reporter John McCormick, he’s spending more on television ads there than any other state, on a dollar-per-Electoral College vote basis.
It’s not just television ad money being deployed in Pennsylvania by Team Biden. They’re sending out their heaviest hitter and biggest draw, and that’s including their own candidate. Barack Obama is campaigning for Biden in Philadelphia.
Republicans are not behaving as if they believe the Quinnipiac polls either. In addition to the other polls and the ad spending from each campaign, they also cite gains made in voter registration as reason for optimism. The New York Times reported this week:
Recent figures from Pennsylvania elections officials show that Republicans have added 174,000 voters since 2016, while Democrats lost 31,000.
Quinnipiac’s equivalent poll in 2016 to the one it released today showed Clinton up 6 points, a result it kept for its final poll. It ended up being off by 7 points, and Clinton ended up losing by less than 1 point.
