Poll: President Trump leads Joe Biden in Kentucky by smaller margin than 2016 victory
LOUISVILLE – A new survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy shows President Donald Trump leading his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in Kentucky, though by a much smaller margin than his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Mason-Dixon poll of 625 registered and likely voters in Kentucky last week found 56% supporting the president's reelection and 39% backing Biden, with 4% undecided.
While substantial, Trump's lead of 17 percentage points over Biden would be significantly less than his 2016 win — even if all undecided voters swung his way — as he picked up 62.5% of the vote in Kentucky that year to Clinton's 32.7%.
Mason-Dixon, which has polled Kentucky races for over 30 years, was remarkably accurate in its survey of the state weeks before the 2019 race for governor, finding former Gov. Matt Bevin and current Gov. Andy Beshear locked in a statistical tie.
Beshear would go on to win the race for governor by a fraction of a percent, with 5,146 more votes than Bevin.
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The new Mason-Dixon poll found Trump handily leading Biden among most demographics in Kentucky, though struggling more with younger voters and women — a recurring theme from most polling of the race around the country.
While the survey showed him leading Biden by roughly 20 percentage points among voters more than 34 years old, Trump trailed Biden by 14 percentage points in the younger demographic.
Trump leads Biden among men in the Kentucky poll by a 59% to 36% margin, though he leads among women by only 10 percentage points.
Nearly 90% of Republican respondents to the poll indicated they would vote for Trump — well above the 67% of Democrats supporting Biden — while Independents favored the president 50% to 39%.
The Mason-Dixon poll also found Trump doubling the support of Biden in Eastern and Western Kentucky counties, up by more than 20 percentage points in Northern Kentucky and with a small lead in 19 counties within central Kentucky.
The one region where Trump trails is in Louisville and its seven surrounding counties, as Biden leads him 55% to 41%. In the 2016 election, Trump actually won slightly more votes than Clinton in these same eight counties.
The poll shows Trump faring worse against Biden in each of the five Kentucky regions compared to his 2016 showing, with the most pronounced difference in Eastern Kentucky, where his 38 percentage point lead over Biden is less than his remarkable 60 percentage point blowout over Clinton in that region.
Mason-Dixon's 2019 polling of Kentucky's race for governor was also on target for how Beshear and Bevin would perform regionally, with the margin between the candidates coming within five percentage points of the actual results in each of the five regions.
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National pollsters Quinnipiac University and Data for Progress both had surveys in September showing Trump leading Biden by 20 percentage points in Kentucky.
Most national and state polling shows Biden to be the favorite to win the popular vote and electoral vote count over Trump, with just two weeks until the election and much of the country already voting early.
Mason-Dixon is expected to release more results from their polling in Kentucky later this week, including the U.S. Senate race between Mitch McConnell and Amy McGrath and approval ratings for Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com or 502-582-4472 and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courierjournal.com/subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Mason-Dixon poll: Trump leads Biden in Kentucky by less than 2016 win
