The latest New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College battleground polling held some bad news for President Joe Biden and some good news for Senate Democrats.
Among registered voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of the six states polled:
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Wisconsin: Biden +2 (47% to 45%)
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Pennsylvania: Biden -3 (44% to 47%)
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Arizona: Biden -7 (42% to 49%)
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Michigan: Biden -7 (42% to 49%)
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Georgia: Biden -10 (39% to 49%)
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Nevada: Biden -12 (38% to 50%)
Conversely, Senate Democratic incumbents and candidates are running ahead of their likely challengers with registered voters in the four states polled:
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Wisconsin: Sen. Tammy Baldwin +9 over Eric Hovde (49% to 40%)
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Pennsylvania: Sen. Bob Casey +5 over David McCormick (46% to 41%)
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Arizona: Rep. Ruben Gallego +4 over Kari Lake (45% to 41%)
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Nevada: Sen. Jacky Rosen +2 over Sam Brown (40% to 38%)
Biden did poll slightly better among likely voters in the blue wall states as a group, pulling ahead of Trump in Michigan while closely trailing Trump in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Still, among registered voters, Biden underperformed Senate Democratic candidates in every state by anywhere from a handful of points to double digits.
The disparity was particularly pronounced in Nevada, for instance, where Rosen is running 2 points ahead of her GOP challenger, but 14 points ahead of Biden—who lags behind Trump by a dozen points in the survey. (It's worth noting that Nevada is a notoriously difficult state to poll.)
Nationally, Biden is also running about 2 points behind 538's generic ballot, which favors House Democrats by nearly 1 point, while Biden trails Trump in 538's national aggregate by roughly 1 point.
The Biden campaign would clearly much rather be running ahead of Trump in the new Times/Siena battleground polling, which painted a bleaker picture for him than the CBS News battleground survey late last month. That poll showed Biden and Trump running within 1 or 2 points of each other among likely voters in the blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But as Semafor's Benjy Sarlin noted, there are two ways of viewing the gap between Biden and his Senate colleagues:
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Biden is in trouble because he’s losing core Democratic voters now; or
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The voters Biden is currently losing are among the most persuadable for Democrats and they’ll return home by November.
Either scenario is possible. But from a candidate perspective, one would much rather be wooing voters who are typically among your party's base than persuading voters who are predisposed to not be in alignment with your party.
Veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi has made this point several times on his own podcast, "That Trippi Show," suggesting that in a close contest, lagging among the Democratic base gives the Biden campaign lots of opportunities to pick up votes.
"We don't have to gain back 20 points with Blacks, we don't have to gain back 20 points with Latinos, or with young people," Trippi said. “If we're in a dead heat when we've lost 20 points with all those folks across the board, you get 2 points, 3 points, 4 points of them back, and Trump is dead."
Polling at this early juncture continues to be inherently flawed because so many voters still aren't clued into the race—a point the Times' Nate Cohn made himself.
But if the survey holds glimmers of truth, voters are signaling that, in their home states, they like Senate Democrats over their Republican challengers.
On one hand, it's concerning that Biden isn't keeping pace. But it also suggests an opening—a potential path to boosting his numbers.
Conversely, if Senate Democrats were also running poorly, it would suggest a so-called red wave election could be on the horizon. This Siena battleground polling is altogether more complicated than that—which holds both hope and peril for Biden’s chances in the fall.
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