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President Joe Biden and his rival, the former Donald Trump, are approaching the first presidential debate in Atlanta on even terms, with the pair tied in a new national poll just days before the meeting. Biden and the former president are tied at 49 percent in a new NPR/PBS News/Marist pre-debate poll, which will air in prime time on CNN next week.
Only 2 percent of registered voters say they have not yet made a choice. According to the poll, Trump has a slight lead, 50 to 49 percent, among those who say they definitely plan to vote in November.
Biden has been in an improved position in recent weeks, although he has not received a major boost from Trump’s conviction on charges of falsifying corporate records after his trial in Manhattan.
But he has improved his standing among independent voters, the group who say they are most susceptible to being swayed by the jury’s guilty verdict. Biden leads Independents in the poll by 50 to 48 percent. That comes after Trump trailed 54-42 in an earlier survey.
“This may be the group most affected by the results of Donald Trump’s legal challenges,” Lee Miringoff, who conducted the poll, told NPR. “But independents are much more persuasive on the whole sea of issues that will impact this election outcome.”
But in a contest in which both sides are preparing massive advertising campaigns against their unpopular opponent, Trump leads 48-41 among those with unfavorable views of both. About 9 percent of voters have not yet decided who they will vote for, compared to 25 percent who say they have a “good idea.”
Biden’s team, which posted a new ad on Monday labeling Trump as a convicted felon, knows it must improve its position among younger voters and non-whites. The results come just a day after the White House was once again forced to respond to a series of troubling videos showing 81-year-old Biden seemingly frozen on stage during events.
(Trump, who just turned 78, last weekend demanded that Biden take a cognitive test even as he botched former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson’s name by repeatedly calling him “Ronny Johnson.”) Trump has his performance improved among whites, at 55-43, doubling his lead from May. Biden’s 58-40 lead among non-whites is an improvement from May, but he may need to boost his performance to reach key battleground states with a large share of non-white voters.
Third-party candidates remain an X-factor. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other candidates, Trump leads Biden 42 to 41 percent. Kennedy is at 11 percent, while Cornel West gets 3 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 1 percent. Libertarian Chase Oliver gets 1 percent.
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