Donald Trump, the Republican rival in the US presidential election, opened a marginal 2 percentage point lead over President Joe Biden this week in the race to win the November election, as voters weigh the recent criminal crisisconvictions of Trump and the Biden’s sonaccording to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
About 41% of registered voters in the two-day poll, which closed Tuesday, said they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, while 39% chose Biden, a Democrat.
About 20% of voters in the survey said they had not chosen a candidate, were leaning toward third-party options or might not vote at all in the Nov. 5 election.
Trump’s lead was within the poll’s roughly 3 percentage point margin of error for registered voters, many of whom remain undecided with about five months until the Nov. 5 election.
An earlier Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from May 31 to June 1 showed Biden with a 2 percentage point lead over Trump, 41% to 39%.
The latest poll found that 10% of respondents would choose Robert Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist running as an independent, if he were on the ballot with Trump and Biden. Kennedy’s share remained unchanged from the previous poll.
While national polls give important signals about American support for political candidates, only a handful of competitive states typically tip the scales in the American electoral college, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.
Both candidates have important responsibilities in the first rematch of the United States presidential election in almost 70 years.
Biden’s responsibilities include concerns about his age (81 years old), as well as strong criticism from part of his Democratic Party for his support for Israel’s war against Hamas militants. The protests have rocked American universities in recent months, fueling concern among Democrats that some young voters could turn against Biden.
Biden this week became the first sitting US president whose son was convicted of a crime, although the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed few voters were changing their minds about the conviction.
Last month, Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of a crime, either in office or after leaving the White House. He is scheduled to be sentenced in July and faces possible prison time after a jury found him guilty of 34 counts stemming from a payment to an adult film actress before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about a alleged sexual encounter she says she had with Trump.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, which surveyed adults nationwide, found that 80% of registered voters said the conviction of Biden’s son Hunter Biden was unlikely to influence their vote, compared with 61% who said Trump’s conviction was not affecting how they vote.
Trump, 78, also faces three other criminal proceedings involving charges that tried to reverse his electoral defeat of 2020 and that he mishandled confidential documents after leaving the presidency in 2021, although legal disputes could prevent those cases from reaching trial before the November elections. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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