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Donald Trump's campaign is said to be concerned about private polling in Ohio, while other surveys suggest the former president is well on course to retain the Buckeye State in November.
A recent article in The New York Times reported on the "worst three weeks" of Trump's latest White House bid since Vice President Kamala Harris officially entered the race.
One concern for the campaign was two private polls conducted in Ohio recently by GOP pollsters, which have not been seen by Newsweek, reportedly showing Trump receiving less than 50 percent of the vote against Harris in the state.
Trump's office has been contacted for comment regarding the polling.
For decades, Ohio was seen as a bellwether state, having chosen the eventual winning presidential candidate in every election between Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to Trump in 2016. The trend was bucked in 2020 when Trump managed to retain Ohio by 8 points (53 percent to 45 percent) but lost the White House to President Joe Biden.
If Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, were to lose Ohio and its 17 electoral votes to Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, it would be a crushing blow to the GOP ticket's election chances.
Recent public polls, however, show that Trump is still ahead in Ohio.
In late July, an AARP Research survey showed that Trump 10 points ahead of Harris in a head-to-head matchup (52 percent to 42 percent) in the state.
Trump had a 9-point lead when other White House hopefuls, such as independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (9 percent), were added to the survey.
A poll conducted by Remington Research Group in early July while Biden was still in the race also showed Trump with a double-digit lead over the president (51 percent to 41 percent).
Elsewhere, a Marist poll from June showed Trump with a 7-point lead over Biden (48 percent to 41 percent) in a full candidate survey, with Kennedy a distant third on 5 percent.
That poll showed Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown beating his Republican challenger for the seat, Bernie Moreno, by 5 points (50 percent to 45 percent).
"In a departure from national voting patterns from 2016 and 2020, Ohio voters are now poised to split their tickets between president and senate," Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said in a statement.
"The Buckeye State's electoral votes are likely to go to Trump while Ohioans are prepared to return Democrat Brown to the U.S. Senate."
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more