(NewsNation) — New polling data shows President Joe Biden trailing behind former President Donald Trump in key swing states as candidates look ahead to the 2024 presidential election.
Trump is currently the front-runner for the Republican nomination even as he faces multiple indictments and has not taken part in any of the GOP primary debates. While Trump has dismissed debates as a waste of time and called on the GOP to cancel them, he has also failed to qualify for some of the debates because he refuses to sign a pledge promising to support the eventual nominee.
Few challengers have emerged in the Democratic Party despite growing concerns over Biden’s age and increasing pushback from Democratic voters on the administration’s support of Israel in the current war.
New polls from Emerson College show Biden trailing Trump in five of six swing states. Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin, while Biden has the edge in Michigan. In the 2020 election, Biden flipped five of the six states that formerly voted for Trump in 2016, with only Nevada going blue in both elections.
Trump held the biggest lead in Georgia, where he was up eight points with likely voters and seven points with registered voters. He has also consistently led Biden in polling done earlier in the year, with Biden showing a narrow lead in only a few polls.
Trump led by smaller percentages in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, where he has been consistently outperforming Biden since summer.
Biden’s best performances came in Michigan and Wisconsin. In Michigan, the president held a one-point lead among likely voters and two-point lead among registered voters. Throughout the year, polling has flipped in the state, with Biden and Trump pulling ahead at different times.
In Wisconsin, meanwhile, likely voters were evenly split between the two candidates, while registered voters preferred Trump by a narrow one-point margin. Earlier polling had shown the state preferring Biden more often.
Both Biden and Trump supporters said inflation and the cost of living were their top concerns in the upcoming election, followed by the economy and jobs. Biden supporters were more likely to see threats to democracy and access to health care as important issues, while Trump supporters named crime and safety as the third most important concern followed by threats to democracy.
Age was also an issue for voters. In all states, voters said a president would ideally be in their 50s while in office, with a significant number stating they had no preference regarding a president’s age.
If elected, Biden would be 82 when he took office, while Trump would be 78. The pair already rank as the two oldest presidents to be elected, followed by former President Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when he took office. It also makes them significantly older than other recent presidents were when they took office, including former presidents Barack Obama (47), George W. Bush (54) and Bill Clinton (46).