Biden’s lead shrinks to six points as Trump tweets poll showing him winning key battleground states

Joe Biden’s lead over President Trump has shrunk to six points, the smallest margin in some two months, according to the first public opinion poll conducted since the close of last week’s Republican National Convention.

But the president appears confident of victory as he tweeted a poll that claims to show him winning both the popular vote and the electoral college – thus securing re-election to a second term in the White House.

Trump on Saturday tweeted: ‘Moving along nicely. MAGA!’

He was reacting to a tweet that claimed to show the results of a new survey that has the president winning the national popular vote by 48 to 45 per cent over Biden.

The president also claimed that the poll showed him winning in key battleground states like Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

But the poll by the ‘Democracy Institute’ is unverified by any independent sources.

In fact, nearly all mainstream polling organizations give Biden a significant edge in the popular vote nationally, though the president could still win re-election by getting 270 electoral college votes.

A Yahoo News-YouGov survey which was done over the course of this past Thursday and Friday found that Biden maintains a 47 per cent to 41 per cent advantage over the incumbent.

The poll shows about a two-and-a-half per cent shift from Biden to Trump compared to a survey conducted by Yahoo News-YouGov a month ago which showed the Democratic former vice president up by slightly less than 9 percentage points.

The latest poll indicates that roughly 1 per cent of registered voters who last month said they would support Biden now indicate they will back Trump.

The new survey also shows that an even smaller number of respondents who previously stated that they would sit out this election are now saying that they will vote for the president.

The latest poll shows a modest post-convention ‘bounce’ for the president. Morning Consult also conducted a post-convention poll which showed Trump trailing Biden by just six points.

A separate survey of other registered voters by Yahoo News-YouGov gave Biden an 11-point advantage both before and after the Democratic National Convention.

Morning Consult had Biden leading by 10 per cent after the Democratic convention. 

The latest survey shows that 96 per cent of both Trump and Biden supporters have already made up their mind – up 2 per cent from late July.

Just 8 per cent of voters are undecided.

The new survey also found that Democrats have a 49 per cent to 38 per cent advantage in voting for the Congressional elections.

Trump appears to have gained voters in recent weeks who say the president comes across as having ‘strength.’

Before the Republican convention, 33 per cent of Americans said Trump had ‘strength.’ After the convention, that number increased to 38 per cent.

Last month, just 19 per cent of those surveyed agreed that Trump ‘cares a lot about people like you.’

In the latest survey, that number slightly increased to 22 per cent.

Those who said they like Trump ‘a lot’ or ‘somewhat’ increased from 24 per cent to 28 per cent.

Trump has also seen a slight uptick in the number of voters who approve of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whereas 38 per cent approved last month, that number has now increased to 40 per cent as the number of cases and daily deaths begins to decline.

More than 180,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic started this past spring.

But the poll does not indicate that a mass of voters are shifting their support to Trump in light of the rioting that taken place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and elsewhere following last week’s police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake.

In July, 59 per cent said they were either ‘very’ or ‘somewhat worried’ about a ‘breakdown of law and order in American cities.’

The new survey shows that number remains unchanged.