Former President Donald Trump leads President Biden by a healthy 7% margin in Ohio — as the 81-year-old commander-in-chief hemorrhages support from black voters and young voters, according to a new poll.
Forty-eight percent of voters in the Buckeye State said they plan on voting for Trump in November, compared to 41% who said they’d cast a vote for Biden, the Marist poll published Tuesday showed.
Meanwhile, 5% of voters said they would back independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the polls and 1% said they would vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and libertarian Chase Oliver.
Independent Cornel West garnered support from less than 1% of Ohio voters, according to the poll. Four percent of voters were undecided.
Trump, 77, beat out his successor by 8% in the battleground state in 2020 and beat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.
The fresh poll comes as Biden’s support among black voters and young voters plunges in the Buckeye State.
Just 57% of black voters said they would vote for the Democrat incumbent in November — a whopping decline from the 83% he carried in 2020.
Trump received 25% support from black voters, while Kennedy got 12%, according to the Marist poll.
The 45th president also leads with younger voters in Ohio, with 46% of voters under the age of 35 throwing their support behind Trump, compared to Biden’s 37% and 12 Kennedy’s 12%.
Trump’s popularity is largely attributed to 59% of voters in the state believing they were “better off” during his administration than under Biden’s, including 13% of Democrats, the Marist poll showed.
Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they thought they were doing better under Biden, including 6% of Republicans.
The poll also found Trump scored a better favorability rating than Biden, getting 45% compared to his rival’s 36% in the state.
A plurality of surveyed voters in the state — 45% — said they thought Trump’s guilty verdict in the “hush money” case was correct and that he did do something illegal.
Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury of all 34 counts related to falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to hide their alleged affair.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents said Trump did something unethical but not illegal and 24% said he did nothing wrong.
Ohioans were also divided over the purpose of the trial. Fifty percent of voters said the trial was intended to uncover the truth, while 49% said it was to get in the way of Trump’s re-election campaign.
But despite Trump leading in the presidential race, 50% of voters said they are backing Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown for the US Senate, compared to 45% for his GOP rival Bernie Moreno.
Ten percent of those who said they will vote for Trump said they are also supporting Brown, compared to only 2% of Biden voters backing Moreno.
“In a departure from national voting patterns from 2016 and 2020, Ohio voters are now poised to split their tickets between president and senate,” said Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.
“The Buckeye State’s electoral votes are likely to go to Trump while Ohioans are prepared to return Democrat Brown to the US Senate.”
The poll was conducted on June 3-6 and had a sample size of 1,137. It has a margin of error of 3.6%.
