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New Polls Show Trump Gaining Ground On Biden In Battleground States

   DailyWire.com
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, July 28, 2020. Trump's National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien tested positive for Covid-19 but the White House said his infection poses no risk to the president or Vice President Mike Pence. Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Polaris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

New polls, at least one of which leans solidly leftward, show President Donald Trump gaining ground on presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in nearly all “battleground” states and seems to indicate Trump is gaining ground in places like Minnesota, where civil unrest has been the worst.

Change Research, which operates as polling apparatus largely for Democratic candidates and organizations, is out with a new poll Wednesday showing Trump making big gains on Biden in “toss-up” states across the board, from Arizona to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida — states Biden led by a considerable margin just two weeks ago.

The latest Change Research poll shows Trump comfortably within the margin of error in Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and quickly narrowing the gap in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he’s behind by just 4 and 5 points, respectively.

The new poll, which likely leans favorably toward Biden, tracks along with other individual state-based polls, particularly one out of Minnesota, which, as Hot Air points out, has been moving in Trump’s direction since late May, just after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the subsequent protests and unrest.

“Between the explosion of violence in Minnesota since the George Floyd protests began and the traction the ‘defund the police’ movement has gotten there vis-a-vis Minneapolis PD, swing voters may be more receptive to the ‘law and order’ option on the ballot than they are in other states,” Hot Air speculates. “That’s big news for Trump since he’s been hammering his law-and-order message nationally lately, both rhetorically and via actions like building up the federal presence in Portland.”

As the anti-police brutality protests wear on, they seem to be experiencing significant mission creep, with demonstrations growing increasingly violent, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest and Portland’s ongoing courthouse riots have dominated headlines, swiftly replacing images of peaceful protests taken in the first few days following Floyd’s death.

But it may not necessarily be Trump’s message that’s resonating, but rather Biden’s that’s not. POLITICO suggests that recent unrest has pulled Democrats, including Biden, further left, into unpopular political territory.

“The coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it’s unleashed are pushing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party further to the left on health care,” the outlet reports, noting that Biden is now “inching closer” to a “Medicare for All” plan, similar to those proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) during the Democratic primaries, as a way of courting progressives left cold by the nomination process.

Medicare-for-All, “Defund the Police,” and other far-left policy proposals are simply unpopular, though, with most Americans — even Democratic convention delegates — and Biden’s leftward lunge may be costing him in the polls.

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