56% OF US VOTERS SAY TRUMP WILL WIN 2ND TERM: POLL

More than five in 10 registered American voters are betting on a second term for US President Donald Trump as he remains "highly competitive" in half a dozen battleground states most likely to decide on the election and will be rewarded richly in the path to the 270 electoral votes if all he does is too tirelessly woo (only) white, non-college educated whites.

These are insights from a clutch of newly released polls and studies that send a stark message to the Trump resistance: To beat Trump, the opposition has its task cut out - appeal to Trump's core demographic of white non-college educated voters while keeping its own supporters in a close embrace.

In a Politico-Morning Consult survey released on Wednesday, 56 per cent of voters expect Trump to return to power in the November 2020 elections. More than one in three Democratic voters align with this view while Republican support for Trump remains high, at 85 per cent.

In the same poll, more than five in 10 (55 per cent) of those polled said they disapprove of Trump, and at least six in 10 (63 per cent) say the country has careened onto a totally wrong track. These are the results of an online poll conducted early November among a national sample of 1,983 registered voters. Results from the full survey have a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

A New York Times-Siena College poll adds swing states context to a similar, second term storyline. It says Trump remains "highly competitive in the battleground states likeliest to decide the election".

Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are battleground states that have earned their titles because of their outsize role in tipping closely fought elections. In 2016, Trump pulled off a win based on his numbers in the Electoral College, although he lost the popular vote.