Trump, senators trailing in poll
President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has imperiled his re-election and his party’s majority in the Senate, and Republican lawmakers in crucial states such as Arizona, North Carolina and Maine have fallen behind their Democratic challengers amid broad disapproval of the president, according to a poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College.
Former Vice President Joe Biden led Trump by wide margins in Arizona, where he was ahead by 9 percentage points, and Maine, where he led by 17 points. The race was effectively tied in North Carolina, with Biden ahead by 1 point, 45 percent to 44 percent.
In all three states, Democratic Senate candidates were leading Republican incumbents by 5 percentage points or more. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican seeking a fifth term, is in a difficult battle against Sara Gideon, trailing by 5 points as voters there delivered a damning verdict on Trump’s stewardship: By a 25point margin, 60 percent to 35 percent, they said they trusted Biden over Trump on the issue of the pandemic.
The battle for control of the Senate is likely to move rapidly to the foreground of national politics after the death Friday of liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Republicans are expected to seek to appoint a replacement, despite having argued in 2016 that a vacant Supreme Court seat should not be filled in an election year, and Trump recently challenged Biden to unveil a list of people he would consider naming to the court.
Voters in the Times poll, which was taken before Ginsburg’s death, said they trusted Biden more than Trump to fill a Supreme Court seat. The poll showed wide margins in Arizona and Maine and a slim plurality in North Carolina. A Supreme Court fight could be particularly challenging for Collins, who has been facing considerable backlash for her vote in 2018 to approve Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.
The poll, conducted among likely voters, suggests that the most endangered Republican lawmakers have not managed to convince many voters to view them in more favorable terms than the leader of their party, who remains in political peril with less than 50 days remaining in the campaign. Democrats appear well positioned to gain several Senate seats, and most voters say they would prefer to see the White House and Senate controlled by the same party. But it is not yet clear that Democrats are on track to gain a clear majority, and their hopes outside the races tested in the poll largely depend on winning in states Trump is likely to carry.
In the swing states, Trump still is lagging across the board. The Times has polled seven presidential battlegrounds in the last two weeks, and the president has not led in any of them, and in no state did he amass more than 44 percent of the vote. Though he repeatedly has tried to shift the focus away from the virus, he has not established a meaningful advantage over Biden on any issue of equal urgency: Voters see Trump as somewhat more credible on issues of the economy and public order than on the pandemic, but not to the point of offsetting their overall disapproval of him.
While Maine exhibited the widest gap over the handling of the virus, voters in North Carolina, the closest presidential swing state polled so far by the Times, also preferred Biden, 52 percent to 41 percent. In Arizona, the difference was even more lopsided, with voters favoring Biden by 16 percentage points.
The poll, conducted by phone Sept. 10-16, had a margin of sampling error ranging from about 4 percentage points in Arizona to 5 percentage points in Maine.