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New poll shows Biden and other top Democrats beating Trump in Florida

Posted at 4:55 PM, Jun 18, 2019
and last updated 2019-06-18 16:55:48-04

As President Donald Trump heads to Florida on Tuesday to officially declare his reelection bid in 2020, he’s trailing multiple top Democratic candidates in the battleground Sunshine State, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

Former Vice President Joe Biden bests Trump in a hypothetical matchup for the general election, by 50% to 41%. This includes 7% of Republicans and 54% of independents in Florida who said they would support Biden against Trump. The general election isn’t for another year and a half, but Biden has the highest lead over the President of tested Democratic candidates.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also tops Trump in a hypothetical contest, though with a smaller lead of 48% to 42%.

Other top Democrats are also beating Trump in Florida, according to the poll, albeit by much slimmer margins than Biden and Sanders. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is leading the President by 4 percentage points (47% to 43%) and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg are all up by only 1 percentage point against Trump in their hypothetical head-to-head matchups, which amounts to holding no real advantage.

Numbers this far out from a general election are hard to read, and could change between now and November 2020. They should be thought of as a snapshot in time rather than a predictor of the future.

About half of Florida voters said they’ve been paying a lot of attention to the campaign for president, including 51% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats.

Biden dominates the Democratic primary for the Southern state, leading 41% among Democratic voters. Sanders and Warren fight for second place, at 14% and 12%, respectively. Buttigieg (8%) and Harris (6%) are the only other candidates to get above 1% of the vote.

Biden’s support is strongest among moderate and conservative Democratic voters, 51%, who said they’ll support the former VP in the primary, and those older than 50 (52%).

Trump’s approval sticks at 41%, with 51% saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing, similar to his most recent approval rating in Quinnipiac’s national poll. Only a third of voters want Congress to begin the process of impeaching Trump, including two-thirds of Democrats.

Half of the voters in the poll said they’re better off financially today than they were in 2016, strongly divided by partisan lines — 84% of Republicans, 23% of Democrats and 55% of independents.