New Opinium/Guardian poll shows Biden leading Trump by 17 points

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last updated 14 October 2020

An Opinium/Guardian poll released on Tuesday shows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a commanding 17-point lead over President Trump.

The survey found that 57 percent of likely voters plan on voting for Biden, while 40 percent say they will vote for Trump. A CNN poll from last week showed Trump down by 16 points, with 57 percent of likely voters backing Biden and 41 percent supporting the president.

Over the last month, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Trump and Biden met for their first debate, and Trump and several White House staffers became infected by the coronavirus. All of this helped Biden, Opinium found, with the Democrat gaining 5 percentage points among undecided voters since September. Biden is also now leading Trump on who is best for the economy, at 45 to 43 percent; Trump had an edge on the economy in earlier polls.

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Opinium also found that 62 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 but will vote for Biden in 2020 said they are switching to the former vice president because of how Trump handled the coronavirus pandemic. When it comes to how people will vote, 55 percent of in-person voters intend to vote for Trump, versus 42 percent who plan on voting for Biden. Among mail-in voters, 75 percent intend to vote for Biden and just 22 percent say they will vote for Trump.

Opinium interviewed 2,003 adults online from Oct. 8 to Oct. 12, and the surveys were sampled and weighted to match the demographics of the U.S. adult population while factoring in education levels and past voting habits.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.