Donald Trump faces Joe Biden at the election on November 3
Joe Biden is pulling away from Donald Trump in key swing states after the president’s combative debate performance and his positive test for coronavirus, new polling for The Telegraph has found.
The share of voters saying they back the Democratic presidential nominee has jumped in four of the six states Mr Trump won by the narrowest margins in 2016, according to research taken after both events.
The responses suggest that far from the US president closing the polling gap by which he has trailed Mr Biden for much of the year it is actually widening as the race enters its final few weeks.
Mr Trump will be hoping either the polls are proved wrong again, as they were in 2016, turnout among his supporters far exceeds his rival or something happens between now and November 3 to cause a major rethink among voters.
Redfield & Wilton Strategies has been polling six battleground states for The Telegraph throughout the campaign to reveal the state of the race where it matters most.
Joe Biden's poll lead over Donald Trump in six key swing states
Two major political events have happened since the last round of polling — Mr Trump and Mr Biden have had their first debate, widely dubbed the most chaotic in modern presidential history, and the US president has tested positive from Covid-19.
Both have dominated the media narrative. The US president faced criticism for his repeated interrupting of Mr Biden and low blows during the debate, including criticising the Democratic nominee’s son Hunter Biden. But his supporters were likely cheering.
The subsequent dramatic news that Mr Trump had caught coronavirus and the events that followed — his move to hospital, confirmation he had been given supplemental oxygen, then his return to the White House and call for Americans not to be "afraid" — dominated headlines for days.
Polling taken after the debate and the announcement of Mr Trump’s positive test in six key battleground states shows it is Mr Biden who appears to have gained votes.
In Wisconsin, Mr Biden’s lead jumped from five percentage points to 10. In Arizona, it jumped from three points to six points.
In North Carolina, Mr Biden’s lead rose from two points to five points and in Pennsylvania — a critical state given its large electoral college votes, it rose from six points to seven points.
The two remaining states did not show the Democrat increasing his lead. He stayed five points ahead in Florida and in Michigan his lead dropped from nine to eight points.
The responses will have the Biden camp cheering. Not just are they ahead but they are further ahead, in general, in the critical swing states than a fortnight ago.
If that result was replicated on election day then Mr Biden would in all likelihood become the 46th president of the United States, with Mr Trump confined to a single term in office.
Biden was judged to have come out on top in the debate with Trump
That is a big if, however. As pollsters often note their surveys are a snapshot of voter thinking at a single moment in time and not a forecast of the result.
The findings chime with nationwide polls in the wake of the first debate in Cleveland, Ohio, that suggest that Mr Trump’s aggressive approach turned off more voters than it won over.
More respondents in all six states who watched the debate picked Mr Biden rather than Mr Trump when asked which candidate would most fight for their interests, suggesting a debate victory for the Democrat.
The chance of the next two debates taking place remain up in the air. Mr Trump pulled out of the second debate when organisers made it a virtual event due to coronavirus concerns, though negotiations continue.
Mr Trump’s illness thrust Covid-19 back to the top of the news agenda, both underscoring the threat the virus continues to pose in America, where there have been seven million positive tests, and throwing the president’s policies towards it into the spotlight.
This may have helped Mr Biden, who has tried to frame the election as a choice about who should steer America through the pandemic.
The findings from these swing states help explain why the Democrat has taken such an approach and, perhaps, why Mr Trump has taken a hit in the polls since the virus has become the dominant topic in the headlines.
Asked which candidate is “more likely to do the most to see an end to the coronavirus pandemic”, voters in the six states overwhelmingly said Mr Biden.
Furthermore his lead on the issue over Mr Trump is sizeable, ranging from 14 percentage points in North Carolina to 24 percentage points in Wisconsin.
Those are much bigger than the leads Mr Biden has in voting intention. The more the Democrat frames the election as a choice on that issue, the more he benefits politically.
There are other signs in the results about just how concerned Americans remain over the pandemic. Around 45,000 new Covid-19 cases in the US are confirmed every day right now.
Many more respondents in all six states said that when it comes to the pandemic — which has already lasted more than six months — the worst is “yet to come” rather than “behind us”.
Between three and four in 10 respondents said that they did not feel safe eating or drinking outside at a restaurant or bar, a finding that would have been unimaginable a year ago.
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