Biden Underperforms Senate Democratic Candidates

Nate Cohn on this morning’s new battleground polls that showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of six key states:

“What’s more surprising is the U.S. Senate results. This is the first time we’ve asked about Senate races this year, and the Democratic candidates led in all four of the states we tested: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.”

“Not only do Democrats lead, but they also seem to do so in an entirely customary way, with ordinary levels of support from young and nonwhite voters, even as Mr. Biden struggles at the top of the ticket…”

“This level of crossover voting has been extremely rare in the last few years, but it was pretty common before 2020. In fact, these results remind me a lot of the 2016 presidential election, when Mr. Trump surged in white working-class areas, Hillary Clinton surged in college-educated areas, and yet the Senate and House results by county still mostly followed the pre-2016 pattern.”