Biden tops Trump in November matchup, but president leads on economy: poll

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Fox News Poll: Biden leads Trump in head-to-head

In a head-to-head presidential match-up, Biden is up by 49-40 percent over Trump, a lead that is outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Another 11 percent would vote for someone else or are undecided. That's all according to the latest Fox News poll.

With just over six months to go until November’s general election, a new poll suggests former Vice President Joe Biden is holding a 7-percentage point lead over President Trump.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee stands at 49 percent among registered voters nationwide, with the Republican incumbent at 42 percent.

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But the race for the White House isn’t decided by the national popular vote. Otherwise, Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 presidential election. Instead, it’s a battle for the states and their electoral votes. Yet when the poll is reduced to 11 swing or battleground states where the margins between Trump and Clinton were close — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Biden holds at a 49-43 percent advantage.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey – which was conducted April 13-15 and released on Sunday – stands in contrast to the most recent Fox News poll, which was conducted April 4-7 and indicated Trump and Biden were tied at 42 percent. A Real Clear Politics average of the latest general election matchups in national polling indicates Biden at 48 percent and Trump at 43 percent.

Biden’s lead in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey’s being fueled a large 85-7 percent lead among African Americans, a 60-26 percent lead among Latinos, a 56-35 percent lead among women, and a 55-37 percent lead among white voters with a college degree.

According to the poll, Trump tops Biden by 11 points on which candidate is better handling the economy, while the Democratic challenger tops the president by 9 points on who’s better combating the coronavirus pandemic.

On the president’s push to reopen the economy, 58 percent of those questioned said they’re most worried that the U.S. will move too quickly in loosening stay-at-home and other social distancing restrictions which could result in more spreading of the coronavirus and a possible second wave of fatalities. Thirty-two percent said they’re most worried that the U.S. will take too long to loosen restrictions, which would further harm an economy already devastated by the coronavirus outbreak.

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There’s a wide partisan divide on this question – with 77 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents more worried about coronavirus, and a plurality of Republicans (48 percent) more concerned about the economy.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was conducted with live telephone operators, with 900 registered voters nationwide questioned. The overall sampling error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.