Surprising Fox News poll puts Biden ahead of Trump by the slimmest of margins

In a major shift away from other national polls, President Joe Biden will take the lead over Donald Trump heading into the November elections, according to a recent national poll published by Fox News Digital.

According to the latest survey, Biden was favored because he surprisingly had improved perceptions of his handling of the economy and managed to position himself ahead of Trump for the first time since October 2023 in the conservative news network's polls.

“Since May, there was a 3-point change in the presidential race. Trump was ahead by 1 point last month, while Biden is up by 2 points today: 50%-48%. That’s well within the margin of error,” noted Fox News Digital, which also noted that this is the Democratic president's best result in the entire electoral cycle since in October he barely led Trump by one point: 49-48.

Biden's surprising gains, despite multiple surveys and other statistical models putting him clearly below Trump, come after a series of events in May that could have influenced small changes over those surveyed.

For example, the convictions of Trump and Hunter Biden happened recently and a relatively positive report on employment in the United States was also published. Biden signed an immigration executive order to limit asylum applications as he seeks to improve the optics around his handling of the border crisis, one of the issues that harmed the president the most in the polls.

In the recent survey, in addition to directly comparing Trump and Biden, Fox News also measured the two main candidates with the rest of the lagging adversaries. In that matchup, Biden was only one point ahead of Trump: 43-42.

In that poll, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received 10% of the support and Cornel West and Jill Stein 2% each.

Last month, according to Fox News Digital, Trump led Biden by 3 points (43-40).

According to the survey, the big difference compared with other polls was the independents, where the democrat might get large gains.

“The key is that Independents favor Biden by 9 points, a shift from May when they preferred Trump by 2 points. While equal numbers of Independents say leadership (59%) and integrity (58%) are extremely important to their vote decision, they are more likely to say Biden has integrity by 23 points compared to Trump being a strong leader by only 11.”

This survey shows how close the November presidential race will be, which will most likely be defined by close elections in the most indecisive states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Although Fox News now gives a slight advantage to Biden, today Trump is also favored by multiple national surveys and prestigious statistical models such as that of The Economist magazine or The Hill.