By Steven Nelson | New York Post
The latest poll by Emerson College, released Wednesday, finds Trump leading 47% to 43% — with Biden’s edge among historically Democrat-supporting minority groups dropping significantly in just one year.
The 81-year-old incumbent’s lead among Hispanic voters narrowed to 3%, down from 14% in an Emerson poll last November — an 11 percentage-point shift.
Biden’s lead among African Americans was a still-substantial 47%, but down 15 percentage points from this time last year.
Other recent national polls have found Biden slipping badly among minority groups — including a New York Times poll of six swing states earlier this month that found the 77-year-old ex-president leading in five of them, propelled by Biden’s support among nonwhites falling 33% from exit polls in 2020.
Trump’s support among black voters, meanwhile, had grown 22% since 2020, the Times poll found.
It’s unclear what’s behind the dramatic swing in support among minorities, though polls have consistently shown that economic concerns — including inflation and high interest rates — are the leading issue for voters.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 4.5% in the popular vote, though he won by much narrower margins in the swing states that secured him victory in the Electoral College.
Trump earned 8% support from blacks and 38% from Hispanics in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of exit polls.
Trump’s black support remained relatively stable over the past two elections, but his Hispanic support grew about 12 points from 2016 to 2020.
In his first run for office, one of Trump’s top issues was building a US-Mexico border wall. In his re-election bid, his boost in Hispanic support was attributed in part to his tough approach to left-wing governments in Latin America.
The Emerson College poll is one of a series that show Trump with a lead over Biden despite facing four criminal trials beginning next year related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, conceal 2016 hush-money payments and his alleged mishandling of classified national security documents.
Trump leads Biden in 11 of 13 recent polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics, which has Trump in front of the president by an average spread of 47.2% to 44.9%.
The former president has sought to turn his criminal indictments to his political benefit by arguing that he’s being persecuted by partisan prosecutors. Black supporters have protested outside his court appearances and told reporters that they too are familiar with a biased legal system.
Trump also has campaigned on mass-deporting illegal immigrants, cracking down on violent crime and pivoting on foreign policy to take a tougher approach toward China and negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
In the Emerson poll, Trump also narrowed Biden’s lead among women to 1 percentage point — down from seven last year — and among four-year college graduates. Biden holds a 2% edge among that demographic, down from 18% last November..
At the same point four years ago, Biden had a 9.6% edge over Trump, while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton led Trump by 4.4% in the RealClearPolitics average eight years ago.
