A pair of new polls in two key 2024 presidential election swing states have delivered encouraging news for former President Donald Trump.
A rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden seems likely in 2024, with the ex-president continuing to hold a massive polling lead over his GOP presidential primary rivals despite facing an avalanche of legal troubles this year, including 91 felony criminal counts and a civil court finding him liable for business fraud.
Surveys released by Emerson College Polling on Wednesday and Thursday show Trump leading Biden in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, both of which are expected to be critical in deciding the next election. The polls show the ex-president leading Biden by a substantial nine points in Pennsylvania while maintaining a slim lead of 2 points in Wisconsin.
However, both polls suggest that the outcome is far from certain more than one year before the election takes place. A full 19 percent of respondents in each state indicated that they would either prefer “someone else” or are undecided about their 2024 vote.
The Pennsylvania poll also indicates that Trump is winning voters under 30 by a margin of 45 to 39 percent, a result that is at odds with the preferences of Gen Z and young Millennial voters found in the overwhelming majority of surveys.
Emerson’s Wisconsin poll indicates that Biden is winning voters under 30 in that state by a margin of 48 to 36 percent.
“In a state Biden won in 2020 by less than a percentage point, and Trump won in 2016 by nearly the same margin, [the Wisconsin] poll suggests a similar trajectory for 2024,” Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Biden campaigns via email on Thursday.
The polls were both conducted via landline telephones and online between October 1 and October 4. The Pennsylvania poll drew from a sample of 430 voters, while 532 voters were surveyed in Wisconsin.
Emerson’s credibility margin for the polls—a measure similar to a margin of error—was 4.7 percent for Pennsylvania and 4.2 percent for Wisconsin.
Biden secured narrow victories over Trump in both states in the 2020 election, winning a combined 30 Electoral College votes. Only 29 votes will be up for grabs in 2024, with Pennsylvania having gone from 20 to 19 Electoral College votes due to the reapportionment process that took place following the 2020 Census.
Meanwhile, several key states won by Trump in 2020, such as Florida and Texas, gained Electoral College votes after the 2020 Census. If the 2024 results were to mirror those that occurred in 2020, Biden would still win, but having lost three Electoral College votes. Trump would gain three votes.
Most recent polling has suggested that the still-hypothetical rematch between Biden and Trump is essentially deadlocked nationally and in most purple states that were critical to the 2020 results.
However, an outlier Washington Post/ABC News released last month did show Trump with a 10-point lead over Biden nationally. The poll also found that Trump was leading by 20 points among voters under 35, a result that pollster Larry Sabato called “absurd.”