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A new poll published this week found former Vice President Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump in key swing states heading into the 2020 general election.
The poll by CNBC/Change Research was conducted between May 29 and 31 among 3,958 adults—all of whom said they were likely to vote in November—in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. While 47 percent of voters said they would vote for Biden, 46 percent said they would cast their ballots for Trump.
The results mark the first time Change Research polling has found Biden in the lead in battleground regions since Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8, leaving Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
According to Change Research pollsters, the results indicate it is possible Biden's lead will grow due to the president's approval ratings.
"There is still room for Biden to consolidate the anti-Trump vote and improve his margins further: 66 percent of those who are currently undecided or voting third party in the battleground disapprove of Trump and 48 percent disapprove strongly," the poll said.
While Trump had a 4-point lead with voters in Pennsylvania and a 1-point lead in Arizona, voters in Wisconsin were evenly split between the two candidates as voters in the other three states began leaning toward Biden, the poll found.
In a separate national poll also conducted by Change Research between May 29 and 31 among 1,457 potential voters, pollsters found Biden had a 7-point lead over Trump nationally.
"That is up from his 3-point lead two weeks ago and his greatest lead to date," the poll said.
The most recent CNBC/Change Research poll conducted in mid-May showed Trump had a 2-point lead over Biden in the same swing states. While a similar poll from early April showed Trump leading Biden by 5 points, the president's frontrunner margin remained between 1 and 2 points after Sanders left the race.
This is the first CNBC/Change Research poll in which Biden established a lead in battleground areas, but recent polling by other organizations indicated Biden may have even broader support in some of those states. Polls of Michigan voters conducted by Fox News in April and Real Clear Politics in late May found Biden with a lead that ranged from 5.5 to 8 points, and a poll by OH Predictive Insights last month showed Biden led the president by a similar margin.
Though the president said Monday he was leading in all swing states, an ABC News/Washington Post poll published the same day contradicted him with findings that showed Biden leading Trump by 10 points. According to a recent analysis by Sabato's Crystal Ball, Biden is also performing better now than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 in 13 states that were important to Trump's victory in the last presidential election.
Newsweek reached out to the Biden and Trump campaigns for comment and will update this article with any response.
About the writer
Meghan Roos is a Newsweek reporter based in Southern California. Her focus is reporting on breaking news for Newsweek's Live ... Read more