President Trump leads all the Democratic primary candidates in Arizona, according to a fresh survey, a resurgence the pollster is crediting to voter dissatisfaction with impeachment.
Trump leads Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Mike Bloomberg in a Dec. 3 to 4 poll of Arizona voters from Predictive Insights, arresting a slide in his standing in the critical 2020 battleground. Mike Noble, the nonpartisan pollster who ran the survey, said the negative reaction to impeachment, a process being driven by House Democrats, has buoyed the president in the state.
“I absolutely believe the impeachment proceedings are having an impact,” Noble told the Washington Examiner on Monday. “The data indicates, at least for here in Arizona, that the Democrats have jumped the shark when it comes to their decision to impeach Trump.”
A November Predictive Insights poll showed that 41% of independents were satisfied with how the president is doing his job, but 46% opposed impeachment and expulsion. Noble said he draws a direct line from the Predictive Insights poll in early November to Trump’s lead over five potential Democratic challengers in the firm’s December survey. He said independents disapproving of Trump’s job performance but also opposing his impeachment is a sign the effort to expel the president from office is a political flop.
Trump has been on the ropes in Arizona, an emerging swing state he won with 48.7% of the vote in 2016, the lowest outcome for a winning Republican nominee since George W. Bush captured 51% in 2000. The president’s struggle with suburban voters, more pronounced since midterm elections last year, could cost him Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes in 2020.
But in the Predictive Insights poll, he led Warren 47% to 41%, Sanders 47% to 34%, and Bloomberg 47% to 40%. Trump led Biden and Buttigieg by 46% to 44% and 45% to 43%, respectively, though those matchups were within the margin of error.
Nevertheless, all of the potential challengers were holding him not only under his 2016 victory percentage. The Republican Party has won all but one of the last 12 presidential elections in Arizona, losing there last to President Bill Clinton in 1996.
The outcome next year, Noble said, hinges on voters in the Phoenix suburbs. He added that he expects the critical voting blocs to be “independents, moderates, and Hispanics,” as well as those not fully decided, to be influential.
The Predictive Insights poll surveyed 628 likely voters via a mixture of live and automated telephone interviews and had a margin of error of 3.91%.
