is leading President Joe Biden in six

of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election.

- These are the states

that are gonna be the most competitive

and most likely to determine the outcome.

- [Narrator] Here are five takeaways

from the Wall Street Journal's new poll.

The Poll found that in a head-to-head matchup,

Trump leads between one and six percentage points

in six states.

The one outlier was Wisconsin,

where the two candidates are tied.

- One thing we're seeing in this Poll

is that President Biden has a significant challenge

in holding together the coalition that elected him in 2020.

(bright music)

- [Narrator] In that same survey, voters were quizzed

on which of the two candidates they'd prefer

when it came to the economy, immigration, abortion,

and mental and physical fitness needed to be president.

On these three voters preferred Trump over Biden

by 20 percentage points.

The only issue Biden pulled higher on was abortion,

where he led Trump by 12 percentage points.

- People have a lot of things in their minds,

and it's the job of the campaign to make the issue

that's most favorable to them, top of mind and voters.

For Biden, that's gonna be abortion.

You'll see them out there talking quite often about

Donald Trump's role in nominating Supreme Court justices

who overturned Roe V. Wade.

- Trump proudly says, quote,

after 50 years with no one coming close,

I was able to kill Roe V. Wade.

- At the same time you see Donald Trump out there trying

to make immigration the most salient issue,

at least right now in voters' minds.

- It's a border bloodbath and it's destroying our country.

- And which issue is dominant as voters go

to vote could determine for undecided voters

which lever they pull.

One thing that screams out from this poll is the broad

dissatisfaction that voters have with the economy.

And in fact, in these seven swing states,

voters are more focused on the economy

and more sour over the economy than are voters nationwide,

and that's a problem for Joe Biden.

The economy is strong by traditional measures,

but people aren't giving the president credit for it,

and that's something he's gonna need to address.

- [Narrator] The survey also found an unusual dynamic.

Voters in these battleground states say the national economy

is in bad shape, but conditions in their home

states are generally good.

- This is one of the puzzles that we see in polling,

not just in this poll, but in many polls.

People say that the economy is doing poorly,

but they quite often say that their own finances

and their own part of the economy is doing fine.

- [Narrator] Third-party and independent candidates

represent an unpredictable element in the election.

- 15% as of now say that they would vote

for a third-party candidate

or an independent candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr

or Cornell West.

And when you add in that some people

who right now say they're gonna support Trump

or Biden say that it's possible, they'll vote for them,

but not definite.

You get as much as a third of the electorate,

that's still up for grabs.

- [Narrator] When asked who they would vote for

in a 2024 election that included third-party

and independent candidates, voters again favored Trump.

In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada,

and Pennsylvania, Kennedy is seeing the most support in

Nevada with 15%.

- Robert F. Kennedy represents a real wild card

in this election.

We found that he is much more attractive

to Republican voters than the Democratic voters.

That suggests that if he gets on the ballot in these states,

which is still an unknown,

he could take more votes from Donald Trump

than he takes from Joe Biden.

But there are gonna be other candidates on most

of these ballots, libertarian candidate,

Green Party candidate, maybe Cornell West,

another independent, and those as a group seem

to take more from Biden than from Trump.

If you ask about all these candidates together,

their effect seems to cancel each other out.

- [Narrator] But the pollsters consider voters

who back these candidates to be persuadable

and potentially open to backing either Trump or Biden.

The voters most up for grabs view Biden, Trump

and the economy more unfavorably than do voters overall.

Some 74% rate the economy as poor or not so good

compared with 63% of battleground state voters overall.

Some 67% view Biden unfavorably

and 61% hold a negative view of Trump.

In both cases about eight points higher than

among all voters in the survey.

One result is that Biden is seeing declining support

among Black, Hispanic, and young voters.

- A mere 68%,

of black voters saying that they're ready to vote

for Joe Biden compared to about 90% nationally

in the last election.

When you see Hispanic men, as we do in this poll,

favoring Trump over Biden, that's a real problem

for the Biden campaign.

If it suggests a long-term trend, it's a real problem

for Democrats broadly,

it suggests that their coalition is fracturing,

but it could be that this is a temporary feature

and that in the course of the campaign we have seven months

of campaigning,

seven months of advertising messages yet to come.

Democrats and Joe Biden can win these voters back.

Now the poll does surface problems for Donald Trump as well.

He's viewed more unfavorably than favorably

and when people think back to his time as president,

they're kind of equivocal about how it was.

He gets better marks as president than Biden does,

but they're not overwhelmingly positive.

Moreover, there's an important voter group that seems

to be shifting away from Donald Trump.

While young voters seem to be more open to voting

Republican,

seniors seem to be more open to voting Democratic.

That's something to watch as we move forward

and could be a potential trouble sign for Donald Trump.