From Arizona to North Carolina: Biden's edge over Trump in battleground states narrows amid economic woes

NEW YORK CITY - President Joe Biden's recent polling bump against presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump has nearly disappeared in key battleground states thanks to current negative attitudes about the U.S. economy, a new study by Bloomberg and Morning Consult found.

The poll found Biden is currently ahead in just one of the seven states most likely to determine the outcome of his matchup with Trump, leading in Michigan by 2 percentage points. Biden is slightly behind the former president in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with his deficit being larger in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.

According to the poll, a majority of swing-state voters see worsening economic conditions in the coming months, with fewer than one in five saying they expect inflation and borrowing costs to be lower by the end of the year. Similarly, despite a resilient job market, only 23% of respondents said the employment rate would improve over the same time period.

For undecided voters, a group crucial to Biden's effort to close the gap with Trump, the share who expect improvement on those economic factors was in the single digits, according to the Bloomberg News poll.

"Some of the shine of the State of the Union address has worn off," said Matt Monday, senior manager of Morning Consult. "People are really tying Bidenomics and their perception of the economy to the inflation rate."

The economy— along with immigration— has quickly risen as one of the top salient issues for voters ahead of the November elections, particularly among Latinos.

Although many studies show the incumbent to still be ahead of the former president with Latinos, an Axios-Ipsos poll showed the favorability advantage is significantly lower than before, going from 30 percentage points in December 2021 to 9 in March of this year.

Frustrations over the Biden's administration's handling of issues like inflation and crime have contributed to the decline in the president's standing. More than half of respondents (53%) said that the economy is the issue they find most worrying.

As per the Bloomberg poll, more than three quarters of poll respondents said the president is responsible for the current performance of the U.S. economy, and nearly half said he was "very responsible."

Regardless of these perceptions, Bloomberg argues, the Biden campaign is relying on social issues, especially abortion, to help energize Democrats.

For the first time in the outlet's tracking poll, more than half of swing-state voters said abortion was very important to their vote. The shares of Democrats and independents who characterized the issue that way has increased since March, while the proportion of Republican voters saying that has held steady.

As abortion rights become a larger issue ahead of the elections, particularly one that will show in several ballots, Latinos could play a decisive role, as some of the main electoral battles will take place in states where they represent a large percentage of the population.

Arizona and Florida, states where Latinos are highly prominent, have proven to be the most emblematic cases dominating the national conversation in regards to abortion. The former ruled in April that the state can enforce a law that is over 150 years old and bans abortion in practically all cases, including rape and incest, with the only exception being when the mother's in danger.

Bloomberg's study comes as the Latino vote rises in importance ahead of the elections and in key battleground states. States like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania have become home to a large community of the Latino electorate.

In fact, more than 1 in 10 voters in November are expected to be Latino. Nevada in particular is expected to have a 15.5% increase in Latino voter turnout. While other Latino-heavy battleground states like Arizona and Georgia will likely have a similar turnout rate to those in 2020.