President Trump is on the defensive in three red states he carried in 2016, narrowly trailing
Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Iowa and battling to stay ahead of him in Georgia and Texas, as Mr. Trump continues to face a wall of opposition from women that has also endangered his party's control of the Senate, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.
Mr. Trump's vulnerability even in conservative-leaning states underscores just how precarious his political position is, less than six weeks before Election Day. While he and Mr. Biden are competing aggressively for traditional swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the poll suggests that Mr. Biden has assembled a coalition formidable enough to jeopardize Mr. Trump even in historically Republican parts of the South and Midwest.
A yawning gender gap in all three states is working in Mr. Biden's favor, with the former vice president making inroads into conservative territory with strong support from women.
In Iowa, where Mr. Biden is ahead of Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 42 percent, he is up among women by 14 percentage points. Men favor Mr. Trump by eight points.
In Georgia, where the two candidates are tied at 45 percent, Mr. Biden leads among women by 10 points. Mr. Trump is ahead with men by a similar margin of 11 percentage points.
Mr. Trump's large advantage among men in Texas is enough to give him a small advantage there, 46 percent to 43 percent. Men prefer the president to his Democratic challenger by 16 points, while women favor Mr. Biden by an eight-point margin.
There was a significant gender gap in the 2016 election, too, but at that time it tilted toward Mr. Trump because men supported him so heavily, according to exit polls. In the Times poll, Mr. Biden sharply narrowed Mr. Trump's advantage with men while improving on Hillary Clinton's 2016 lead with women in Texas and Iowa.
In Georgia, Mr. Biden's lead with women essentially matched Mrs. Clinton's final advantage in the 2016 race. But where Mr. Trump carried Georgia men by 23 points four years ago, he was ahead by about half that margin with men in the state in the Times poll.
The overwhelming majority of voters — about nine in every 10 in all three states — say they have definitely made up their minds about whom to vote for, leaving relatively little room for late developments to shift the overarching shape of the race.
The poll, conducted by phone among likely voters from Sept. 16 to 22, had a margin of sampling error of four percentage points for Texas and five in Iowa and Georgia. Mr. Trump's tenuous hold on some of the largest red states in the country has presented Mr. Biden with unexpected political opportunities and stirred debate among Democrats about how aggressively to contest states far outside the traditional presidential battleground. Mr. Biden has made efforts so far in a few states that voted emphatically for Mr. Trump four years ago, including Georgia and Iowa, but he has resisted pressure to compete for Texas, a huge and complicated state that Democrats believe is unlikely to furnish the decisive 270th Electoral College vote.
But the presence of competitive Senate races in many of those states has been a powerful enticement to Democrats, including Mr. Biden.
www.nytimes.com
