Polls show Biden ahead in Nevada, tied with Trump in Ohio.
Joe Biden maintains a steady lead over President Donald Trump in Nevada and the two are virtually tied in Ohio, as voters continue to express dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College released Wednesday.
Biden leads 48% to 42% among likely voters in Nevada and 45% to 44% in Ohio, the polls found. Six percent of Nevada voters and 7% of Ohioans said they remain undecided.
The polls were taken after Trump announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, and most of the survey took place before Trump returned to the White House on Monday night.
As the two campaigns spar this week over safety precautions for next week’s debate, voters in both states, including about 20% of Trump’s supporters, said by wide margins that the president did not take adequate precautions to protect himself from the virus.
The results illustrate the shifting political dynamics in a pair of states each party has been hoping to flip from its 2016 results. When the Times polled Nevada last month, Biden held a 4-point lead. And Ohio, a state critical to Trump’s Electoral College prospects, appears to be a toss-up after Republicans and many Democrats had assumed the state’s demographics made it virtually certain to remain in Trump’s column. The president carried Ohio by 8 percentage points in 2016.
The margin of error for both polls is 4.3 percentage points.