With Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden becoming presumptive nominees of their respective parties this week, there has been increasing talk about what the polls say about the state of the race.  Also, there has been increasing notice that what we should look at are the not the Trump vs. Biden matchup polls, but the polls that include other candidates.

Equally important, the U.S. presidential election is not a nationwide race, but rather a state-by-state race for electoral votes.  So what matters more than national polls is how the candidates are doing in the states expected to be close, or what are generally called the battleground states. 

We can answer these two questions for a point in time from a series of polls for 7 states released by Bloomberg/Morning Consult on February 29, 2024.  The 7 states polled are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  Bloomberg/Morning Consult released both Trump vs. Biden and five-way, Trump (Republican) vs. Biden (Democrat) vs. Kennedy (independent) vs. Stein (Green) vs. West (independent), polls for these 7 states conducted over the same period of time.  Real Clear Politics reported this unique set of 2-way and 5-way polls for battleground states.

Since 7 polls of both 2-way and 5-way races would be 14 polls and a lot of numbers, a summary of the polls might be more useful.

President Trump leads in all 7 states, whether the race is 2-way or 5-way.  Mr. Trump’s lead grows when the race is expanded to 5 candidates in every state but Michigan, where it shrinks from 2 points to 1 point.  On average, Mr. Trump gains slightly less than 1.3 points in the 5-way polls of these battleground states compared to the 2-way races in the same states.

So it appears that in late February, President Trump was leading in the swing states and on average slightly gained in these swing states when third-party candidates were included in polling a 5-way race.  This is consistent with what the RealClearPolitics.com average says about the race when third-party candidates are included in polls for each state, but 2-way and 5-way polls for each state are not matched up.

There are a few caveats, both positive and negative, to consider with these polls.  These polls were conducted February 12–20 and released February 29.  Like all polls, they are a snapshot at a moment in time.  These polls, like most polls at this point before an election, are of registered voters.  Historically, GOP candidates gain in September, when the polls typically start using a likely voter screen.  In the 5-way polls, there is no Libertarian party candidate included.  Stein of the Green Party probably draws away votes from Biden, if either major party candidate.  A Libertarian candidate might draw votes from Trump.  Finally, the percentages in both the 2-way and 5-way polls add up to about 90% and are all between 88% and 92%, implying that between 8% and 12% of registered voters in these polls would not pick a candidate.

To reiterate the third-, fourth-, and fifth-party candidates seem to help rather than hurt Mr. Trump’s margin in the polls.  Still, this was at a point in time with about 10% of voters not picking a candidate, and issues will certainly arise between now and when people vote.

James L. Swofford is a professor of economics in the Department of Economics, Finance, and Real Estate at the University of South Alabama.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.