Joe Biden Makes Polling Gain on Donald Trump

President Joe Biden has made a marginal gain on Donald Trump in a new national poll, five months before the presidential election.

In March, the incumbent and the former president won enough primary races to secure, respectively, the Democratic and Republican nominations in the 2024 presidential election. Polls have so far shown that the results will be tight as the pair are statistically tied in most surveys, or enjoying only marginal leads.

However, according to one of the latest polls, by Emerson College Polling, Biden’s chances of retaining the keys to the White House are slightly increasing. The poll found that 46 percent of voters support Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidential election, while 45 percent back Biden, and nine percent are undecided.

While this shows that Trump is still marginally in the lead, this marks a one point increase in support for Biden from May, when the pollsters found that 44 percent of voters supported him.

Despite the poll showing that Biden is making ground, when undecided voters were asked which candidate they were leaning toward, 50 percent said they would support Biden and 50 percent opted for Trump.

But when third-party candidates were included on the ballot, Trump’s support decreased by two points to 44 percent and Biden’s seven points, to 38 percent.

The poll of 1,000 voters was conducted between June 4 and June 5. It has a margin of error of +/- three percentage points.

It comes after Biden narrowly overtook Trump in the national polling average and now leads by 46.3 percent of the vote to 46.1 percent.

However Trump has still succeeded in other polls. In a national poll by Morning Consult conducted from Friday to Sunday, Trump held a 1-point lead over Biden (44 percent to 43 percent). The poll surveyed 10,404 registered voters and had an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.

Due to the U.S. Electoral College system, which awards each state a certain number of electoral votes based on population, swing state polls are more important than national polls in determining the result of the election. A presidential candidate needs to secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success.

Thomas Gift, who heads the center on U.S. Politics at University College London, previously told Newsweek that reading too much into polls was a mistake.

“Polls are so variable at this point that the only consistent insight we can glean from them is that Biden and Trump are neck and neck—not only nationally but in key swing states,” he said. “Trying to read too much into any one poll, or even set of polls, five months out from the election is a fool’s errand.”

Newsweek contacted representatives for Biden and Trump by email outside of business hours to comment on this story.

The presidential election will take place on November 5.