The presidential election is a dead heat between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
A nationwide Florida Atlantic University poll released Tuesday found Biden and Trump tied at 44%.
When the responses were narrowed to likely voters, Biden fared slightly better, but the contest is still essentially tied, with 47% for Biden and 45% for Trump.
That’s generally in line with most recent national polls, which have one or the other candidate slightly ahead. The latest RealClearPolling average had Trump leading Biden, 45.5% to 47.2%.
And it’s somewhat expected given “how highly partisan this race is and how fairly evenly divided the country is,” said Kevin Wagner, a Florida Atlantic University political scientist.
The FAU poll was conducted among voters across the country, and comes as five states, including Florida, are holding their presidential primaries — even though the Biden vs. Trump contest is, for all practical purposes, set.
The election is almost eight months away, and public opinion can shift. And the outcome is determined in state-by-state races for electoral votes, not the overall national totals.
Relatively few people are open to changing their minds. The poll found 4% of those surveyed said they’d vote for another candidate and 4% were undecided.
The FAU poll found the vast majority of Democrats favor Biden (86% to 8%) and the overwhelming majority of Republicans favor Trump (86% to 9%).
Independents are evenly split at 43% for Biden and 40% for Trump, which is within the margin of error and not a statistically significant difference.
The never Trump, never Biden votes
Non-Trump voters were asked why they felt the way they did.
It was an easy question for the overwhelming majority: 67% of non-Trump voters who responded that they would “never” consider voting for him.
That left a relatively small share of non-Trump voters to explain other reasons. The top concern of non-Trump voters was performance, cited by…
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