Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on polls showing Biden trailing Trump in key states

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• Amna Nawaz:

  War roils on in the Middle East, challenging President Biden back home, and a criminal trial rolls on in New York with former President Donald Trump at its center.

  Here to analyze the events through a political lens, I'm joined by our Politics Monday duo. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Great to see you both, as always.

  (Crosstalk)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Let's pick up where Laura's piece left off there.

  We know Democrats are leaning heavily into abortion rights in Michigan. Michigan is just one of a few battleground states we're keeping a close eye on. So, take a look at these maps and just let's talk about these trends. This was back in October of last year.

  The New York Times/Siena poll, showed that Mr. Trump actually led in five of those six battleground states. What you're seeing now is basically the same map, but these are numbers from May of this year that shows that the race is largely unchanged when it comes to those six states,Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania.

  Wisconsin, Tam, is the only one that leans towards President Biden at this time. How does the Biden team look at that trend? And how are they going to tackle that?

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  Well, I was talking to people today from the Biden universe. And they say, yes, things are stuck, that the polls really haven't moved.

  They are not freaking out about it. They believe that they have an entire campaign to run. I think that, if we're looking at polls that look like that in October, they should be freaking out. But right now we're six months out.

  They insist — and based on conversations I have had with voters — this is backed up — although we feel like a lot has happened and there has been so much politics happening, people who don't want to think about politics also happen to be undecided voters and swing voters and like — people who may not be likely voters, but who might get picked up in polls.

  And those people are just not following every twist and turn. They aren't following every single economic indicator, and they're also not following this trial in New York that former President Trump is facing. So they just aren't tuned in. Biden campaign has spent a lot of money on ads.

  It seems like a lot, but compared to what they're going to spend, it is minuscule.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, how do you look at that, that trend over those last six months, the trend that hasn't changed?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Right.

  It's a race that — again, we feel like this race has been going on forever. Most regular voters aren't going to start really tuning in until we get to the fall. One thing that is notable in these polls, the reason people are talking about these polls specifically is because these aren't national polls.

  These are the polls of the states. This is how you get elected president, right? You can win the popular vote. We have learned this a couple of times now. You can win the popular vote. You got to win the 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

  And what we're seeing — and this is really the thing that we're going to be watching over time when we talk about trends — is the real erosion of support from Biden among voters of color. And this is the reason that he's doing worse, Biden is doing worse in places like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, where voters of color, especially Hispanic and African American, make up such a significant share of the vote.

  In a state like Wisconsin, which is overwhelmingly white…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  … there's not been as much movement against — as much as much movement against Biden now. So that's the question.

  Can Trump really hit these — really, it would be in some cases a historic high for a Republican among some of these groups? Are we seeing a real realignment of voters? Or is this a moment in time, as Tam said, where you have a lot of people who are kind of checked out, who are disappointed in both candidates, especially disappointed, as the woman in Lisa's piece pointed out?

  Here she is. She's voting for — she says she's voting for Joe Biden, but not enthusiastically.

• Amna Nawaz:

  On the same point of younger voters and their movement away from President Biden, though, many of them are the ones who are driving some of the protest vote, the uncommitted votes we saw during the primary season.

  How is that issue — how do you see that playing out, especially given the fact that Mr. Biden has now turned towards some tougher language, saying he could withhold some weapons from Israel and how they're conducting the war in Gaza? Does that matter to those voters?

• Amy Walter:

  Well, it's unclear because, at this point — and Tam brought up a really good point about the campaign getting engaged and what the Biden campaign is doing.

  In this poll that we just were talking about, the New York Times poll, when they asked voters, who do you think is doing a better job on the conflict or would do a better job…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  … Donald Trump was leading by almost 15 points.

  Now, what the Biden campaign would say is, do they — do these voters know what Trump's position this issue, especially if you are supportive, more supportive of the Palestinian side, the fact that Donald Trump has been very close ally of Netanyahu? Probably not something that they know at this point.

• Amna Nawaz:

  How do you look at that, Tam?

• Tamara Keith:

  Well, and just to add to that, on TikTok and various other social media platforms, there's a lot of talk about, well, under Donald Trump, there were no wars. Everything was fine. Under Joe Biden, there are wars.

  Now, we can fact-check the bejesus out of that, but we won't. But because that perception is out there, particularly among young voters, that can also feed into this.

  More broadly, I would say that there was this Harvard youth poll that oversamples young people. It's a poll of people under 30 years old. And it asked what their top issues are in this election and pitted different issues against each other and ranked them based on which issues come up at the top. It's the economy. It's the cost of living.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  Guns and…

• Tamara Keith:

  It's student loans and guns.

  And then you go down to like number 14. You go way, way, way, way, way, way down on the list, and that's where you get Gaza as a voting issue.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Oh, that's interesting.

• Tamara Keith:

  The reality is that people are complicated. They have a lot of things that they care about.

  And there are some people who care very passionately about what's happening in Gaza. There are a lot of people who care a bit, but care more about other things. And I'm not saying that President Biden is actually doing particularly well among people who care a lot about the economy or the cost of living either.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, let me stick with you on this, because you mentioned the criminal trial of Donald Trump that continues to unfold in New York. William reported on that earlier in the show.

  We have seen Mr. Trump continually come out, undermine the process, attack those involved in it, and especially undermining the judicial system. It feeds his narrative, right? But is he also preparing voters for a possible guilty verdict here?

• Tamara Keith:

  He has been preparing certainly his voters, his base, to distrust anything that he says to distrust.

  And he is shouting loud and clear, distrust this process. Don't trust that jury. They're liberals. Don't trust the prosecutor. Don't trust the judge.

  So there's a lot of that out there. The bigger question is how much this is going to register. The trial hasn't really changed anything. Will a verdict change things?

• Amna Nawaz:

  Will it?

• Amy Walter:

  Because there's been nothing really new, I think, that has come out of this trial that at least people who've been following it closely would say this is new information that we're getting.

  I don't know. I think voters, if there is a conviction, it may take a while for it to actually sort of seep into their — the way they think about voting in this election. Right now, it is a proof point, or it's a data point, again six months away.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And it's a hypothetical, right?

• Amy Walter:

  And it's — right now, especially, it's a hypothetical.

  But let's say there is a conviction. As we get closer to the election, the question becomes, how much does the Biden campaign lean into that issue? Right now, they have been very, very quiet about this, and who gets to set the narrative about what this is?

  Right now, Donald Trump is setting the narrative about this trial. It's corrupt, it's unfair, it's political. There's not been a whole lot of narrative from the other side, certainly not from the Biden campaign, but not from Democrats either.

• Tamara Keith:

  And I think it's notable that this may well be the last trial that former President Trump faces before people start voting.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, always good to see you both. Thank you.

• Amy Walter:

  Good to see you.

• Tamara Keith:

  Thank you.