National Poll: Joe Biden 45%, Donald Trump 40%

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden (D) leads President Trump by five points nationally, a Hill-HarrisX survey released Friday reveals.

Biden leads Trump by five percentage points, 45 percent to the president’s 40 percent, while seven percent are undecided. The former vice president’s lead remains outside of the survey’s +/- 1.84 percent margin of error:

National GE:
Biden 45% (+5)
Trump 40%@Harris_X_/@thehill, RV, 10/3-6https://t.co/33QTgv0iwV

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) October 9, 2020

Democrats comprise 37 percent of the survey’s sample, followed by Republicans (32 percent), then independents (29 percent).

The survey follows a Sunday Express/Democracy Institute Poll survey released last week showing Trump and Biden statistically tied. Trump garnered 46 percent compared to Biden’s 45 percent — a lead within the survey’s +/- 2.5 percent margin of error.

Another poll released last week, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, raised eyebrows; it showed Biden leading the president nationally by double digits, 53 percent to Trump’s 39 percent. A closer look at the poll revealed the survey vastly oversampled Democrats, as Breitbart News detailed:

Thirty-five percent of poll respondents self-identified as Democrats, while only 27 percent self-identified as Republican, and 32 percent self-identified as Independents, resulting in a survey sample that was Democrat +8, a significantly higher sampling of Democrats than measured in the most recent national Gallup Poll of party affiliation. That poll, (conducted between August 31 and Sept 13), found that 29 percent of Americans self-identified as Republican, 30 percent self-identified as Democrat, and 40 percent self-identified as Independents, resulting in an actual national partisan breakdown of Democrat +1.

In other words, the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll includes five percent more Democrats and two percent fewer Republicans than the actual national population, for a net oversampling of Democrats of seven percent.

Saturday morning’s RealClearPolitics average showed Biden with a 9.6 percent advantage in the national popular vote.

Trump has been performing better in key swing states in recent days, surveys showing the incumbent taking the lead in both Florida and Arizona.

HarrisX conducted the survey October 3-6 among 2,841 registered voters.