PA Poll: Trump Leads Primary, Virtual Tie in Presidential General; Senate Race Shows Early Democrat Lead

Former President Donald Trump leads the presidential primary field and is in a virtual tie in a general election against President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) shows an early lead in the Senate election and attracts less than half the voters.

The latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll showed that Trump led the rest of the Republican primary field with 40 percent of the vote, six points over his closest contender, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

With DeSantis at 34 percent, all other named candidates in the Republican primary poll, with 227 registered voters respondents, were in the single digits: former Vice President Mike Pence at six percent and Nikki Haley at four percent. There were also six percent who said “other” and 11 percent who “didn’t know.”

In a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Biden, the two are in a virtual tie. With 643 registered voters and a 4.9 percent margin of error, 36 percent of the respondents said they supported Biden, while, within the margin of error, 35 percent said they would support Trump.

While Trump is officially running for president, Biden has not officially announced if he is running, despite secretly getting everything in place for another announcement. A recent report indicated that he could wait until the fall to announce his bid.

Additionally, the poll found that Casey, who announced this week he is running for reelection, has an early lead in the poll against two hypothetical challengers — former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick, who ran for the U.S. Senate last cycle but didn’t make it past the primary, and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who lost in the general election for governor.

The respondents were split into two groups; half were asked if they preferred Casey or McCormick, and the other half were asked if they chose Casey or Mastriano.

The poll showed that Casey led McCormick by seven points (42 percent to 35 percent) with 359 respondents and Mastriano by 14 points (47 percent to 31 percent) with 286 respondents.

However, both of the questions also show that Casey has under 50 percent of the vote, which is not a good sign for a three-time incumbent.

The latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll was conducted from March 27 to April 7. Each question had its own number of registered voter respondents, and while the margin of error was 4.9 percent for the complete set of questions, the sampling error for the subgroups was larger, according to the polling firm.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.