Trump Hits 50% for the First Time as Appetite for Third Party Recedes Somewhat
Former President Donald Trump maintained his lead over President Joe Biden, according to the national BIG DATA POLL conducted in December. Significantly, support for the 45th President has surpassed the critical 50% threshold for the first time ever when including leaners.
In a two-way hypothetical matchup, Trump initially leads Biden 43.7% to 41.7% with 14.6% reporting to be undecided. However, when asked to decide, voters on the fence broke for the likely challenger against the 47th President 51.9% to 48.1%. Overall, Trump leads Biden with a first-ever majority margin, 51.3% to 48.7%.
Biden leads 52.5% to 47.5% in the Northeast, a narrower advantage than the 58% to 41% margin he enjoyed in 2020. Specifically looking at the census division, Biden leads Trump 58.1% to 41.9% in New England. However, for a Democratic presidential candidate, he holds a statistically insignificant and historically weak 1-point lead in the Middle Atlantic. While stunning, this is in line with other recent polls suggesting New York is surprisingly close and the former president leads in Pennsylvania.
Conventional wisdom holds the 2024 U.S. presidential election will likely be decided in the Rust Belt. In November, BIG DATA POLL conducted a large study across the Big Six: Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump led in five of the six states, with the two presidents locked in a statistical dead heat in Minnesota, the bluest of the bunch. Now, he leads Biden in the Midwest by a margin of 53.4% to 46.6%, up from the 51% to 47% edge back in November 2020.
Important to note, voters who cast a ballot in 2020 reported to have backed Biden by a 49.3% to 46.1% margin, very close to the 51% to 47% final result even as 2.0% claimed to have support Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and another 2.6% claimed to have voted for “someone else”.
Of those who cast a ballot in 2020, the race is nearly even with Trump barely leading 50.1% to 49.9%. Though that’s still a sizable shift away from the incumbent, it’s the large 58.2% to 41.8% lead he holds among voters who did not cast a ballot in 2020 driving his support. Among likely voters, Trump’s lead shrinks slightly to 50.7% to 49.3%.
In the three-way hypothetical matchup, Trump leads by 3 points, 43.4% to 40.1%, with 9.8% choosing someone else. The appetite for a third party choice receded somewhat since October, though it’s clearly still present. When asked to lean, more undecided voters chose a generic third party option than either two-party choice, though Trump’s lead grows to 4 points, 44.9% to 41.4%.
In the four-way matchup with an independent candidate and a generic third party option, Trump leads Biden after leaners 42.7% to 39.0%, with 9.1% opting for Robert F. Kennedy and 9.2% for someone else. The full six-way hypothetical eliminated the generic third party option and also included independent Cornel West, Libertarian Party candidate Lars Mapstead and Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein. With no undecideds, Trump leads Biden 43.6% to 38.0%, while RFK garnered 11.5%, Mapstead came in at 3.1%, West at 2.5% and Stein at 1.3%.
Methodology
BIG DATA POLL interviewed 3,011 registered voters nationwide from December 16-18, 2023 via mixed-mode to include 2,772 likely voters screened by self-reported likelihood to vote and vote history. Interviews conducted online are sourced through Lucid (CINT) and phone interviews including P2P SMS and text-to-online are sourced from the Aristotle National Voter File Database. Likely primary voters were further screened for eligibility by registration and intent based on open and closed primary systems by state to include 1,339 Republican primary voters and 1,298 Democratic primary voters. Results were weighted for gender, age, race and ethnicity, education and income, geography and region. The overall sampling error is +/- 1.8% at a 95% confidence interval. The sampling errors for the Republican and Democratic Presidential Nominations are +/- 2.7% and +/- 2.7% at a 95% confidence interval, respectively. It is important to note that sampling errors for subgroups are higher. All BIG DATA POLL publicly conducted surveys are crowdfunded via the Public Polling Project, supplemented if necessary by BIG DATA POLL and are NOT funded by or affiliated with any candidate, campaign, committee, or political entity. Full and interactive crosstabs can be viewed on MarketSight.
