Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* The latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in a general election match-up, 49% to 42%. The same poll last month found the president trailing by nine points. The same poll found that nearly two-thirds of the public believes Trump did not take the coronavirus “seriously enough at the beginning.”
* The New York Times reports that private Republican surveys have recently pointed to the president trailing Biden in Michigan, with one recent poll showing him losing the state by double digits. Trump narrowly won in Michigan four years ago in one of the nation’s closest 2016 contests.
* Third-party presidential candidacies rely on signature gathering to qualify for ballots, and officials with the Libertarian and Green Parties are confronting the possibility that the pandemic will make their tasks vastly more difficult.
* The Biden campaign is launching targeted digital ads slamming Trump’s lack of preparation in handling coronavirus, which will air in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Note, while the full ad is nearly two-minutes long, there will reportedly be shorter versions in the mix.
* A HuffPost analysis found that Trump’s re-election campaign is quietly paying Eric Trump’s wife and Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend $15,000 a month. The payments are reportedly coming by way of the president’s campaign manager’s private company. * For those still keeping an eye on Democratic nominating contests, Biden easily defeated Bernie Sanders in the Wyoming primary, the results of which were announced yesterday. * Though the vast majority of election forecasters would agree that Utah is not a battleground state, latest statewide poll from UtahPolicy.com and KUTV 2News found Trump leading Biden in Utah by just five points, 46% to 41%. * Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said last week that her party is “full steam ahead” with plans for a national nominating convention in Charlotte in August. She went on to tell the Washington Examiner, “A virtual convention is not on the table for us. So no matter what, we will be having a physical convention — or, a physical nominating process.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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