All sides follow polls.

Even if you dismiss and poo-poo them I know you still follow them. They are usually right which is irritating to a lot of people. Yet it shouldn’t be because they are a guide to what campaigns are doing right, wrong, and a guide to what they can do better.

We will be bombarded with them from now until the election and here is the latest one that shows that nationally Trump is closer than most of the media would like to admit. From Zogby Analytics…

Right now President Trump is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden 44% to 40% in our latest Zogby Analytics presidential poll. In third place is Libertarian nominee Dr. Jo Jorgensen (5%) and in fourth place is Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins (2%). 9% of likely voters surveyed were not sure.

President Trump was beating Biden in the east (Trump leads 43% to 41%) and south regions (Trump leads 44% to 37%), while Biden was beating the president in the all important Central Great Lakes (Biden leads 48% to 38%) and western regions (Biden leads 50% to 34%). Joe Biden was crushing Donald Trump with younger voters aged 18-29 by more than a two to one margin (Biden leads 49% to 20%), while Trump was winning slightly with all voters over 30 (Trump leads 45% to 42%).

When it came to party affiliation, Biden performed better with Independents (Biden leads 36% to 31%), while each candidate received at least 82% of their respective parties’ support. Interestingly, among Independents, we asked do they lean Republican (71% would vote for Trump), lean Democrat (72% would vote for Biden) or have no lean at all. Among those who said no lean, these are also swing voters, Trump was winning slightly 30% to 28% against Biden.

Biden held healthy advantages among large city voters (Biden leads 46% to 41%), suburban voters (Biden leads 49% to 34%), suburban women (Biden leads 53% to 31%), and suburban parents (Biden leads 45% to 40%), which are groups that will all play a big role in the upcoming presidential election.

Just a couple things to note here.

This poll is doing regions and not individual states. As we learned in 2000 and then 2016, the electoral college is what decides who sits in the White House for four years.

So the ‘Central Great Lake Region” means Michigan, Ohio, Illinois Indiana, and Wisconsin. Biden currently leads the region by 10 points. However, that is an average of those states. Trump could very well be up in Ohio and Indiana and down in Michigan and Wisconsin. The latter two he won in 2016 in an upset. Illinois is not in play for Trump.

The battleground states that Trump won in 2016 are absolutely the key to him winning reelection and this poll gives an idea of who he is leading with and an idea of the issues that move those voters. What is it that the Trump campaign could do to take the lead with suburban parents (Biden leads 45% to 40%). I’m sure this has something to do right now with COVID-19 and kids going back to school.

All of the groups listed above in the Zogby poll were doing well over the past year with the economy and that needs to be messaged over and over again that if the Trump administration led the country there, are they capable of doing it again?

Don’t dismiss polls so easily. Use them as a snapshot of where to fine-tune the message of how to win in 98 days.