Former President Donald Trump has been hit with a series of negative polls this week, as the road to the presidential election continues.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to face his Democratic opponent, incumbent President Joe Biden, in November, and so far, polls have shown that the results of the 2020 White House rematch may be tight—with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys.
This week, three polls have shown Trump is now behind Biden. One—a Fox News poll of 1,095 registered voters—showed Biden ahead of Trump with 50 percent of the vote share to the former president’s 48 percent. The new polling results show a three-point change from May, when Trump was ahead by one point, the outlet reported. They also mark the first time since October that Biden has polled ahead of Trump in a Fox News survey.
The polling, conducted between June 14 and 17, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, meaning the candidates are statistically tied.
Another poll of 10,132 registered voters, conducted by Morning Consult between June 14 and 16, found that 44 percent would vote for Biden, while 43 percent would vote for Trump.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point, so the candidates are also tied in this survey.
A third poll of 1,094 adults, conducted by YouGov between June 11 and 14, found that 41 percent of respondents intended to vote for Biden, while 39 percent intended to vote for Trump. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump for comment by email outside normal business hours.
Though national polls may paint a picture of public sentiment, presidential elections are often determined by a handful of key swing states, as the Electoral College system awards each state a certain number of votes based on population.
A presidential candidate needs to secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success.
While these recent polls show Trump trailing Biden, others show the former president leading. With more than four months to go until voters cast their ballots, it is still too early to predict the outcome of the election.
Christopher Phelps, a professor of modern American history at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., previously told Newsweek the polls would narrow by November, and that it was more important to scrutinize the differences between the two candidates’ policy offerings.
“The race will likely continue to narrow, as is typical, by November,” he said. “We can only hope that our news media begin to move away from the horse-race model of ‘who is ahead’ based on polls and models that have at best a mixed record of accuracy—and instead focus more on deeper analysis of the policy differences so that whatever choice the public makes is an informed one.”
On June 27, Biden and Trump are set to meet in Atlanta for the first of two scheduled debates ahead of the presidential election on November 5.
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