Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in two of the three closest fought states a year ahead of the 2024 election, according to an exclusive poll for DailyMail.com, amid doubts about the economy and border security.
Trump is five points ahead of Biden in Arizona and three points up in Georgia.
However, Biden leads his likely 2024 challenger in Wisconsin by five percentage points.
All three awarded their electoral college votes to Trump in 2016, before flipping narrowly to Biden in 2020.
The result of the 2024 election could come down to who takes victory in these key states.
JL Partners polled 550 voters in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. The results show Joe Biden in danger of losing two states that helped him win in 2020
The three states chosen had the narrowest of margins in 2020. Each went for Trump in 2016 but Biden flipped them in 2020, helping him to an electoral college win 306 to 232
But now Biden faces a challenge to hold his coalition together in Arizona, where Trump has a lead among Hispanic voters, and in Georgia, where independents are switching to the former president.
Taken as a whole, the results show Biden in trouble, said James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, who ran the poll for DailyMail.com
'Trump is ahead by a fair margin in two states Biden cannot afford to lose – Arizona and Georgia,' he said.
'Buoyed by a solid performance among his base, and a lead with independents in the two states, Trump is the early favorite.
'Though Biden still has women and graduates on side, as well as Black voters, Trump is narrowing the gap with the latter group as well as Hispanics.
'On the flip side, Biden can take heart from holding onto Wisconsin by an increased margin than in 2020.
'Is there a new pattern at play with Trump making gains in states with a more diverse electorate while white women stick with Biden?'
JL Partners asked 550 likely voters for their views in each of the three states, using landlines, text messages and apps to ask questions.
In Georgia, 39 percent said they would vote for Trump if the election were held tomorrow, compared with 34 percent who preferred Biden.
That lead is powered in part by independents, who go 30 percent to 24 for Trump over Biden.
Trump is ahead in Arizona and Georgia but trails Biden in Wisconsin
Trump is ahead of Biden in national opinion polls with almost a year to go. But polling state by state, particularly in key battlegrounds, gives a clearer view of the electoral college result
In 2020, Biden won the state by the tightest of margins: He won 11,000 votes more than Trump, or about 0.2 percent of the turnout.
It is a similar picture in Arizona, where 39 percent said they would for Trump, compared with 36 percent who preferred Biden.
Trump gets the backing of 31 percent of Black voters — long the base for Democratic politicians and for Biden in particular — way above the national number. He also takes 37 percent of Hispanic voters, compared with 34 percent for Biden.
In 2020, Biden won by just 10,500 votes or 0.4 percent.
The results from Wisconsin make better reading for the Biden campaign.
The president leads Trump by 37 percent to 32, and his coalition of college educated voters plus minorities is standing up better than in the two other states, helped by Robert Kennedy Jr.'s position on six points.
Yet it still marks a remarkable reversal from 2020, with Biden now trailing in the more diverse states and holds a lead only in the whitest of the three.
And it shows that Trump remains a formidable election opponent despite four criminal indictments this year.
The headline data are backed by other questions in the poll.
Voters in Arizona and Georgia both saw Trump as more presidential than Biden (by margins of two and three percent respectively). But in Wisconsin they said Biden was the more presidential by eight points.
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s support in Wisconsin stands at six percent, eating into Trump's vote share and helping Biden maintain a lead in the state
And in Arizona and Georgia they said Trump was more in touch with their priorities, by seven and eight points respectively, while in Wisconsin it was Biden (by two points).
Johnson, the pollster, said there was a still a long way to run before election day. And just as there were warning signs for Biden, there was potential trouble ahead for Trump too involving the impact of RFK Jr. on his vote and Democratic enthusiasm for keeping him out of power.
'We believe our polling, which makes voters choose “Someone else” before being given RFK Jr and other independents as an option, gives a more accurate picture at this stage of Kennedy's reach – closer to five to seven percent than the double-digit vote shares recorded in some other surveys,' he said.
RFK's numbers in Wisconsin suggest Trump may lose vote share to the independent elsewhere too.
Then there is the fact that Trump's presence on the ballot may elevate Democratic turnout.
'The most important issue to Democrats is not the economy, or healthcare, or any other policy issue, but the need to stop Donald Trump,' he said.
'That may end up bolstering Democrat turnout.'
The results carry a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.