No boost for Biden against Trump in Pa. polls after State of the Union address

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was a speech celebrated by Democrats as energetic and feisty, but polling shows it did little to shift voters in Pennsylvania.

Two Pennsylvania polls released this week show no meaningful change for Biden in the critical state where he runs neck and neck with former President Donald Trump. The Republican leads Biden narrowly in both polls, though within the surveys’ margins of error.

The State of the Union is one of the more closely watched presidential speeches but still isn’t something that average voters tune into, especially undecided voters or those less engaged eight months before an election. For Democrats, the goal was likely more to reassure Biden’s base than to make meaningful inroads with undecided voters at this point.

“Historically, the State of the Union has never been a political game changer,” public affairs consultant Larry Ceisler said. “In this case, I do not think President Biden was speaking so much to move poll numbers higher as much as he needed to stop the bleeding in his job performance metrics. The president needed to end the debate within his party as to whether he was game ready for a difficult reelection. … He accomplished that.”

And Biden and Trump are such known entities in the state that it comes as little surprise that a political speech didn’t move the needle.

“Both of these presidential candidates are so well known, and so well vetted, that expecting a big polling jump after a singular event is just pure folly,” GOP political consultant Chris Nicholas said.

Here are some takeaways from the two Pennsylvania polls.

In a Fox News poll of 1,000 registered voters in the state, Trump led Biden by 2 percentage points, within the survey’s margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

Biden’s strongest support in the poll came from voters of color (64%), white voters with a college degree (57%), suburban women (57%), and voters 65 and older (50%).

Trump’s core support comes from white evangelical Christians (73%), white men without a college degree (63%), rural voters (59%), and Gen Xers (54%).

As in most other polls of Pennsylvania, voters who identify with a party are largely sticking with their party’s presumed nominee.

In a potential five-person race that includes Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, Trump and Biden tie in the state with 42% each.

The Fox pollster noted that compared to other swing states, Pennsylvanians have a slightly rosier outlook on the economy, which could benefit Biden. Fifty-nine percent of Pennsylvania respondents said the economy is getting better or holding steady.

Biden’s strengths remain election integrity, abortion, health care, and climate change, while Trump is seen as better on the economy, immigration, and border security.

Trump fared slightly better in an Emerson College/the Hill survey released Thursday, which found 47% of registered voters back him. The survey of 1,000 voters had a margin of error of +/- 3%.

Ten percent of voters are undecided. When these voters are asked which candidate they lean toward, Trump’s overall support increases to 52% compared with Biden’s 48%.

“There is a distinction in motivation between Biden and Trump voters,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement. “Trump voters support the former president because they care about an issue (28%), like Trump (27%), or dislike Biden (21%), whereas a plurality of Biden voters (33%) support the president because they dislike Trump and 24% support Biden because they like him as a candidate.”

When third-party candidates are included on the ballot in the Emerson poll, Trump leads Biden 44% to 40%. Eight percent are undecided.

The economy is the top issue for 36% of voters, followed by crime (12%), immigration (11%), threats to democracy (11%), health care (9%), education (7%), housing affordability (6%), and abortion access (4%).

The Emerson poll also looked at the U.S. Senate race with incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) leading Republican David McCormick by 4 points, down from a 10-point lead in February.

Casey leads slightly with independent voters, though many of them are still undecided in the race.

The survey showed some potential ticket splitting in the state: Nine percent of former Trump voters said they plan to vote for Casey, while just 3% of former Biden voters said they’d vote for McCormick.