A new poll shows some challenges to President Biden’s chances against former President Trump in Arizona — a state Biden carried in 2020.
A new CBS News poll showed Trump leading Biden by 5 percentage points in Arizona, with 52 percent support among likely voters and 47 percent of respondents backing Biden. The poll comes weeks after Arizona was thrust into the national spotlight when a state Supreme Court ruling upheld an 1864 law and made performing an abortion a crime.
About 51 percent of voters in the Arizona poll said abortion will be one of the most important factors they decide to vote on in November’s presidential election. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they would support a constitutional right to abortion in the state.
Biden’s campaign quickly jumped on the abortion ruling, launching an ad blitz in Arizona last month in which Biden told voters that Trump poses a risk to abortion access for millions of women. Trump said last month that he believes abortion laws should be left to the states, and later said the Arizona ruling went too far.
Forty-four percent of registered voters in Arizona said Trump will leave abortion to the states if elected to the White House, while another 33 percent said he would make abortion illegal nationwide, the poll found. Another 23 percent said Trump would do nothing or that they were unsure.
Despite Biden trailing Trump in the poll, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) has a comfortable lead over Republican Kari Lake in a hypothetical contest for the state’s Senate seat. Gallego has 49 percent support, according to the poll, while Lake has 36 percent.
The poll was conducted May 10-16 among 1,510 adults in Arizona and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points for the entire sample and a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points for registered voters.
The polling average from the Hill/Decision Desk headquarters in Arizona shows Trump with a 6.1 percentage point lead over Biden in a head-to-head matchup in the state. Trump has almost 49 percent support, while Biden has almost 43 percent.
The Hill has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.
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