The White House race between President Trump and 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has tightened six weeks before Election Day in three states Trump won four years ago, according to polls of Georgia, Iowa, and Texas.
Trump and Biden have 45% support apiece in Georgia, despite the president clinching the state by 5 percentage points last cycle, New York Times and Siena College surveys released Thursday found.
Pollsters said Trump is 3 points ahead of Biden in Texas, 46% to 43%, but trails by the same margin in Iowa, 45% to 42%. The incumbent carried both states in 2016 by 9 points.
Biden’s edge is based on his popularity with women, especially in Iowa and Texas. Trump remains the preferred candidate for men, yet the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator has closed the gap that emerged between Trump and then-Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton.
About 9 in 10 respondents have made up their mind regarding who they will vote for by Nov. 3, New York Times and Siena College found. Many hold more positive views of Trump than elsewhere in the country, and in Georgia and Texas that trend extends to the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. A majority, though, believe racialized criminal injustice is a bigger problem than the riots over police brutality.
[Read more: Trump campaign says it doesn’t need to win Florida — but will win Florida]
The trio of states offers the nominees a total of 60 electoral votes in their race to 270. The polls’ results suggest Trump’s pathways to the White House are narrowing as Biden commands high, single-digit leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those states decided the contest last time around.
While the Texas numbers were promising for Biden, his campaign isn’t on the air in that state. With the addition of New Hampshire last weekend, Biden has ads running in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, and Minnesota. Those investments indicate where his camp thinks he can make a play.
But that hasn’t stopped Biden projecting confidence concerning Texas.
“Texas? Well, we got a shot there,” he told donors this week.
The New York Times and Siena College surveys were conducted among likely voters from Sept. 16-22, meaning it was already in the field when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last Friday. Their margins of error range from plus or minus 4 points in Texas and 5 points in Iowa and Georgia.
