Poll finds Biden leading in battleground states, but race tightening

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading President Trump across six key battleground states with less than three months to go before Election Day, according to a new CNBC-Change Research poll released Wednesday. 

Biden holds a 3 point lead overall in the critical states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Biden holds a lead in all six states, but it is just 1 point in North Carolina, 2 points in Arizona and 3 points in Florida and Pennsylvania.

The former vice president has a 5 point lead in Wisconsin, and a 6 point lead in Michigan. 

Biden trailed Trump by a single point in North Carolina in the CNBC-Change Research poll released earlier this month, but now leads 48 percent to 47 percent. 

Former President Obama is the only Democrat to win his presidential race in North Carolina in recent years, doing so in 2008 before losing in 2012.

In Florida, a state Trump cannot afford to lose, the president has narrowed the gap with Biden in the poll.

Biden led by 6 points earlier this month, but now has just a 3 point edge.

In Arizona, a state no Democrat has won in the presidential race since 1996, Biden leads Trump 49 percent to 47 percent. 

Trump won the presidency in 2016 by shocking Democrats with wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. He was the first Republican to win the first two states since 1988, and the first to win Wisconsin since 1984.

The race is close in all three states, though the new polls showing a tighter contest in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

in Michigan, Biden leads 50 percent to 44 percent; in Pennsylvania he’s up 49 percent to 46 percent; and in Wisconsin, Biden leads 49 percent to 44 percent, up 2 points from earlier this month.

The poll was fielded in the days immediately following the Democratic National Convention last week and provides one of the first snapshots of Biden’s post-convention support. Nationally, he received a slight bump, widening his lead over Trump to 8 points from 6 points earlier this month. 

Biden’s speech on the final night of the convention received generally positive reviews, according to the poll, with 71 percent of likely battleground state voters and 70 percent of likely national voters who watched it reporting a positive reaction. 

The poll shows some positive battleground state trends for Trump, however.

In the six battlegrounds, the number of voters who expressed serious concern about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic ticked downward by 4 points, while approval of Trump’s handling of the outbreak rose by 3 points.

His overall job approval in the battleground states, meanwhile, ticked up to 48 percent, a 2-point increase from earlier this month.

Nationally, the president’s job approval remained unchanged at 45 percent, according to the CNBC-Change Research poll. 

The poll surveyed 4,904 likely voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from Aug. 21-23. It also surveyed 2,362 likely voters for its national poll. The margin of error is 1.4 percentage points for the battleground state survey and 2.02 for the national results.