Donald Trump Gaining Ground in State No Republican Has Won in 40 Years

Donald Trump has slowly gained ground in the blue state of New York, where the margin between the former president and Democrat Joe Biden has significantly shortened between 2020 and now.

According to the latest poll by the Siena Research Institute, part of the Siena College in Loudonville, New York, Trump is lagging behind incumbent Biden by as much as 9 percentage points in his home state—much less than what was reported a month ago, when he still trailed the Democrat by 21 percentage points.

The numbers, though still in favor of Biden, show that Trump has been gaining support in New York at the same time as the Democratic president has been losing it. When compared to Biden's victory in the state in 2020, which crushed Trump 61 to 28 percent, the current results speak of the crisis of popularity suffered by the Democratic president.

The poll, released on Tuesday and conducted among 1,225 New York State registered voters between October 15 and 19, showed that the Democratic president is ahead of his Republican rival 46 to 37 percent despite having the worst-ever favorability (45 to 52 percent) and job approval rating (46 to 51 percent).

What's worse, a majority of 52 percent of Democrats said they would want a different presidential nominee than Biden.

The gap between Biden and Trump shortens to 7 percent when including independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornell West on the ballot in a four-way matchup, with Biden leading Trump 38 to 31 percent. Kennedy gathered 13 percent of the vote and West 5 percent, according to the Siena College poll.

Kennedy announced he was running as an independent after joining the race as a Democrat, a move that analysts said wouldn't bring him to the White House but could add an unpredictable third-party factor to the 2024 race. West left the Green Party in May, saying it was "the best way to challenge the entrenched system."

The recent poll shows a significant change for New York, a state where Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win a majority of voters' support in 1984.

"Is New York still 'true blue?' True, 49 percent of voters are enrolled as Democrats and only 23 percent as Republicans," said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.

"True, the last Republican presidential candidate to win here was Ronald Reagan in 1984. But also true is that just last year, a Republican came within seven points of being elected governor. And also true is that right now, Biden has his worst-ever New York favorability and job approval ratings," he said.

"The good news for Biden is the election is more than a year away. The bad news is there's more bad news."

So what swayed New York voters? A majority of 52 percent of polled voters said that New York was headed in the wrong direction, while 65 percent believed the same about the country.

Migration in the state, which recently made national headlines, is considered a "very serious" problem by 57 percent of voters, up from 54 percent in August.

Nearly two-thirds, 64 percent, say New Yorkers have done enough for new migrants and must now work to slow the flow of migrants, compared to 29 percent who say the state should accept and work to assimilate them. Some 58 percent agree with Mayor Eric Adams that the migrant issue "will destroy New York City," though 46 percent disapprove of the job he's doing to address the problem.

"While other issues in Washington and abroad have largely driven the news cycle over the last few weeks, the influx of migrants to New York remains top of mind for voters, with 84 percent saying it's a serious...problem for the state," Greenberg said.

"Seldom do we see an issue where at least 79 percent of Democrats, Republicans, independents, men, women, upstaters, downstaters, Blacks, whites, Latinos, Catholics, Jews, and Protestants all agree—that the migrant influx is a serious problem," he added.

That said, New York voters still have no love for Trump, with a majority of 59 percent having an unfavorable opinion of the embattled Republican primary frontrunner.