2020 polls: No 'Trump bump' post-convention as Joe Biden solidifies lead with few voters left undecided

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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continued to lead Donald Trump in every major national poll that emerged this past week, despite prognostications from elections experts that the president would receive a post-convention "bump" in his support numbers.

Less than two months before the 3 November election, most Americans appear unflinching about their views on who should be their next president.

In the latest national poll from CNN, the Democratic ticket of Mr Biden and Kamala Harris led the Republican ticket of Mr Trump and Mike Pence by 8 percentage points, 51-43.

CNN conducted a similar poll the week before the conventions using the same methodology and found Mr Biden leading Mr Trump 50-46 per cent, a statistically similar outcome considering sampling error margins.

Eighty-nine per cent of the 1,106 registered voters who responded to the CNN poll conducted between 28 August and 1 September said their mind was made up about who they'd vote for, the same percentage as the poll before the conventions.

Biden-Harris voters were more entrenched in their support, with 94 per cent saying their minds were made up, compared to just 5 per cent saying they might change their votes.

Eighty-seven per cent of Trump-Pence supporters said their minds were made up, with 12 per cent saying they might change.

The Democrats made more overt efforts at their convention to win over the small chunk of voters who are still undecided about who they might choose, trotting out speakers who spanned a vast ideological range, from the pro-life former Republican Governor of Ohio John Kasich to progressive icon Bernie Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont.

Republicans, on the other hand, sought to shore up their base with grave warnings that "Joe Biden's America" would be marked by perpetual racial strife embodied by scenes of unrest in Portland, Oregon; "open borders" to allow a free flow of immigrants into the country; and attempts to "abolish the suburbs."

Mr Biden does not advocate for open borders, and an Associated Press fact check of claims from an RNC speaker that he would "abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning" concluded the statement was false.

Still, that message appears to have resonated with some voters in Midwestern swing states such as Pennsylvania, according to the Monmouth University Polling Institute, which conducted a poll there over the weekend after the GOP convention.

Mr Biden led the president by 4 percentage points, but that advantage is fragile: Mr Trump has clawed back support in 10 key counties that run from the Philadelphia suburbs through the northeast region of the commonwealth. Among that bloc of Pennsylvania voters, the race stands at 46 per cent for Mr Trump, compared to 44 per cent for Mr Biden.

Less than two months before, Mr Biden was leading those 10 counties by 54 per cent to 35 per cent, according to the Monmouth poll.

"The Republican convention attempted to sow some seeds of doubt among core Democratic blocs, especially young and urban voters. It looks like they may have had a small amount of success with that, at least for now," said Patrick Murray, the Monmouth poll's director.

"There's a reason Trump campaigned in Scranton during the Democratic convention. This crucial region of the commonwealth is still up for grabs," Mr Murray said.

While Mr Biden enjoyed a 6.9 percentage point edge nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average from 26 August through 4 September, Pennsylvania and several other swing states are still up for grabs as Americans celebrate their Labor Day weekend.

Mr Biden led Mr Trump by an average of 5 percentage points or less among recent polls in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Most of those states' results were within their respective surveys' margins of error, meaning they are statistical tossups.

The national CNN poll released last week after the conventions showed that voters trust Mr Biden over Mr Trump on virtually every major issue area except the economy, where Mr Trump and Mr Biden were virtually tied, 49-48 per cent, respectively, on who voters think would be a better steward of the economy.

As both nominees visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week, 56 per cent of respondents to the poll said they trust Mr Biden to address racial inequality in the US, compared to just 38 per cent who said Mr Trump.

In August, anti-police brutality protests in Kenosha after the police shooting of a 29-year-old black man, Jacob Blake, saw flare-ups of violence and rioting.

The president and his attorney general, William Barr, have refused to acknowledge racial disparities in police shootings of unarmed civilians, with Mr Trump chalking up the thousands of such deaths over the last half-decade to "bad apples" in police forces.

"I think the police do an incredible job," Mr Trump said at a news conference last week.

Democrats and Republicans could not reach even a starting point earlier this summer on negotiations for policing reform, with one of the major sticking points being Democrats' insistence on ending qualified immunity laws that help shield law enforcement officers from legal liability for using force on the job.

Mr Biden maintained double-digit leads over Mr Trump on handling the coronavirus response, foreign policy, and health care. He had more modest advantages in voters' trust on helping the middle class and leading the criminal justice system.