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Former President Donald Trump may have a secret weapon to winning the 2024 election, poll numbers suggest.
Trump, who has largely divided Americans since pursuing his White House ambitions in 2015, is still attracting new voters despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. In several polls, the former president and GOP frontrunner is outperforming Biden, who is running for re-election, among voters who did not vote in the last election.
A CNN survey released Monday found that Trump's margin over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup was significantly boosted by voters who did not cast a ballot in 2020. In Georgia, those voters favored Trump by a 26 percentage point margin. In Michigan, they backed him by a 40-point margin. Biden won both Georgia and Michigan in the last election. CNN did not specify whether these voters were too young to vote last time or didn't vote for other reasons.
Overall, registered voters in Georgia preferred Trump 49 percent to Biden's 44 percent, while those in Michigan backed Trump by 50 percent to Biden's 40 percent. The share of voters who would not support either Trump nor Biden in both states was at least as large as the margin between the two.
In another poll from The New York Times/Siena College, almost a third of Trump's 2024 support in battleground states is driven by voters who did not vote in 2020, while those voters only account for 20 percent of Biden supporters. And an Emerson College poll from Friday also found that nearly 8 percent of voters who did not vote in 2020 picked Trump over Biden, while a smaller 5 percent chose Biden over Trump.
Although the numbers of new Trump voters is small, that kind of movement is important for any campaign when the top two candidates continue to remain in a dead heat.
"Both campaigns would be wise to search for those who have not voted in past elections," political consultant Jay Townsend told Newsweek. "Trump did that well in 2016. Less well in 2020. I'm sure that Biden will be looking to add younger Americans that have become eligible voters during the last eight years."
Townsend said those voters will be especially important in swing states, where both Trump and Biden will need to drive up voter turnout. If they can persuade voters who sat out the last election to cast a ballot this year, it could be a game changer. As of right now, polls show that Trump holds the advantage.
Trump is not only attracting more new voters, but also doing better than Biden in terms of holding onto his 2020 supporters.
The NYT survey conducted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed that 75 percent of Trump's 2024 support comes from voters who supported him in 2020, while only 69 percent of Biden's 2024 support in those states is fueled by those who voted for him in 2020.
The CNN poll echoed that trend, finding that more Biden supporters from Georgia and Michigan were tilting in Trump's favor for 2024.
Trump was also able to attract more Biden voters, 3 percent, than Biden was able to do with Trump voters, 1 percent, according to the NYT poll.
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About the writer
Katherine Fung is a Newsweek senior reporter based in New York City. She has covered U.S. politics and culture extensively. ... Read more