WASHINGTON — Six in 10 swing-state voters say President Joe Biden bears responsibility for a surge in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a downbeat signal for his reelection prospects as Republicans largely avoid blame on the issue, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found.
Biden again trails Donald Trump in each of seven swing states in the monthly survey, and lags Trump 42% to 48% across all those states in a head-to-head match-up. The former president’s lead grows to 9 percentage points when third-party candidates are included.
The economy remains voters’ chief concern at the ballot box by a wide margin. Yet a greater share of respondents cited immigration as their most important issue in the 2024 election than in any previous installment of the poll, while the proportion who said the same about the economy fell to the lowest yet.
The narrowing gap suggests that GOP efforts to put immigration at the center of the campaign are working, especially against a backdrop of a resilient job market and a drumbeat of border security coverage in conservative media.
Biden’s comparative weakness on the issue comes as Trump urges his party’s lawmakers to block a border bill before the election in order to deprive the president of a policy victory in this area.
The poll findings broadly are a warning sign to Biden, whose allies are urging his campaign to step up its efforts as Trump has all but clinched the GOP nomination. Respondents trust Trump more than the president on a wide range of issues, including the economy, immigration, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, ties with China, infrastructure, housing and crime.
Trust Gap
The poll’s overall margin of error is 1 percentage point, with wider margins of 3 to 5 points in each of the surveyed states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump’s lead in most of the states is within the margin of error. Trump won…
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