Arizona poll finds trouble for Biden vs. Trump

A new poll shows some trouble for President Biden’s chances against former President Trump in Arizona — a state that Biden carried in 2020.

A new CBS News poll found Trump leading Biden by 5 percentage points in Arizona, with 52 percent support among likely voters and 47 percent of respondents backing Biden. The poll comes weeks after Arizona was thrust into the national spotlight, when a state Supreme Court ruling upheld an 1864 law and made performing abortion a felony.

About 51 percent of voters in the Arizona poll said that abortion will be one of the major factors in whom they decide to vote for in November’s presidential election. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they would support a constitutional right to abortion in the state.

Biden’s campaign quickly jumped on the abortion ruling, launching an ad blitz in Arizona last month that featured Biden telling voters Trump poses a risk to abortion access for millions of women. Trump said last month that he believes abortion laws should be left up to the states, later saying that the Arizona ruling went too far.

Forty-four percent of registered voters in Arizona said Trump will leave abortion to the states if elected to the White House, while another 33 percent said he would make abortion illegal nationwide, according to the poll. Another 23 percent said Trump would do nothing or that they were not sure.

Despite Biden trailing Trump in the poll, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) has a comfortable lead over Republican Kari Lake in a hypothetical match-up for the state’s Senate seat. Gallego has 49 percent support while Lake has 36 percent, according to the poll.

The poll was conducted May 10-16 among 1,510 adults living in Arizona and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points for the entire sample and a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points for registered voters.

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average of Arizona shows that Trump has a 6.1 percentage point lead over Biden in a head-to-head match-up in the state. Trump has nearly 49 percent support while Biden has nearly 43 percent.

The Hill has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.