Pennsylvania Poll: Trump Ties Race with Biden in Keystone State

A poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania released Tuesday shows the Keystone State’s presidential contest between incumbent GOP President Donald Trump and Democrat nominee former Vice President Joe Biden is tied.

Trump and Biden are level at 46 percent apiece in Pennsylvania while four percent support a different candidate and four percent are undecided, the Rasmussen Reports poll reveals.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters in Pennsylvania was conducted during the Republican National Convention from Aug. 25 through Aug. 27, and has a margin of error of three percent.

Trump’s approval rating in Pennsylvania per the survey is at 50 percent, while 49 percent disapprove of his job performance. The president’s favorability rating is also stronger than Biden’s favorability by several percentage points. Rasmussen Reports wrote about the survey:

Forty-nine percent (49%) have a favorable view of the president, while 50% percent (50%) share an unfavorable opinion of him. This includes Very Favorables of 36% and Very Unfavorables of 44%. Biden is seen favorably by 46% and unfavorably by 52%, with 29% who have a Very Favorable opinion of him and 38% who hold a Very Unfavorable one.

Trump’s surge in Pennsylvania seems to be fueled by a rise in black voter support, Rasmussen Reports noted:

Worrisome for the former vice president is his 67% black support, low for a Democrat, with the incumbent earning 27% of the black vote in Pennsylvania. Trump leads among whites and other minority voters.

This survey represents a five-point swing in Trump’s direction since the last time Rasmussen Reports polled Pennsylvania in mid-July, suggesting the president’s position in the Keystone State is improving. It also comes after another poll from Monmouth released earlier this week showed a nine-point swing Trump’s direction over the six weeks from early July to the end of August.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes are critical to either candidate’s various pathways to victory. Trump won the state in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first time a Republican has flipped Pennsylvania in decades.

Biden, meanwhile, consistently plays up his Scranton roots and just this week ventured out of his Delaware basement bunker to Pittsburgh for his first in-person campaign event in months.