Former President Donald Trump’s plan to expand the universe of swing states is paying off. Left-wing panic is reportedly sinking in over New York’s increasingly competitive status, with one local Democrat official saying it has morphed into a “battleground state.”
Politico reported on the development in the long-blue Empire State on Wednesday in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump on June 27:
Elected officials, union leaders and political consultants are panicking over polls showing a steady erosion of Biden’s support in a state he won by 23 points four years ago. They’re so worried they’ve been trying to convince the Biden team to pour resources into New York to shore up his campaign and boost Democrats running in a half-dozen swing districts that could determine control of the House.
Worry is so fervent that Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine (D) is warning that the state, which voted Democrat in each of the last nine presidential elections, is now in “battleground” status.
“We’re still acting like this is a one-party state, which for pretty much 20, 25 years it has been,” he told Politico. “I truly believe we’re a battleground state now.”
Indeed, Trump has shown he is moving within striking distance of Biden in New York in two of the latest polls out of the state, which reveal a vastly different landscape than the 23-point margin Biden carried the state by in 2020.
The most recent Siena College poll, conducted from June 12-17, 2024, found that Trump was just eight points behind Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head race, at 39 percent and 47 percent, respectively. The poll sampled 805 registered voters and had a margin of error (MOE) of ± 4.1 percentage points.
This notably came before Biden’s debate performance, which sent shockwaves through the Democrat Party, and after Trump’s conviction in the business records trial.
An earlier Emerson College/Nexstar Media poll of 1,000 registered voters from May 28-29, 2024, showed Trump six points behind Biden in a five-way race and ten points behind him in a two-man race. In the deeper field, Biden took 44 percent, Trump landed at 38 percent, and third-party candidates, led by independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., combined for nine percent. This was released hours before Trump was convicted in the business records trial, and the MOE is ± three percentage points.
The current poll margins are more representative of the 2022 gubernatorial race between former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) — which was decided by 6.4 points — than they are of the 2020 or 2016 presidential elections.
Concerns are also bubbling around congressional races in New York, with one influential New York Democrat anonymously telling Politico Biden is imperiling down-ballot candidates.
“It’s never been more important for a Democratic House member to focus on building their own local brand and to run on that,” the person said. “Biden isn’t going to be handing out coattails no matter what. He’s only got anchors.”
Trump first told Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in December that he sought to broaden the map of states in play for Republicans in the 2024 cycle to include usually blue states, such as New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia, and Minnesota.
“One of the other things I’m going to do — and I may be foolish in doing it — is I’m going to make a heavy play for New York, heavy play for New Jersey, heavy play for Virginia, heavy play for New Mexico, and a heavy play for a state that hasn’t been won in years, Minnesota,” Trump said in the more than two-hour-long interview at his luxurious seaside Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump seems to be making good on that promise. He posted a narrow lead in a Co/efficient New Jersey poll in late June, was 1.1 percentage points behind Biden in the Minnesota FiveThirtyEight average as of July 10, and faced a one-point deficit to Biden in New Mexico, according to an 1892 poll conducted for the state’s Republican Senate candidate, Nella Domenici, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in June.
