More discreet than a yellow highlight pen, but the purpose is the same.

Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll

The memo was put together after the debate by OpenLabs, a progressive nonprofit that conducts polling and message-testing for a constellation of Democratic groups, including the 501(c)4 nonprofit associated with Future Forward, the preferred Super PAC for Biden’s reelection campaign. OpenLabs is something of a black box: Their website is mostly blank, they don’t seek publicity, and their client list is closely held. But their data-driven memos are trusted in Democratic circles, and typically passed around to a small group of clients and strategists. One of those Democrats forwarded me the OpenLabs document on Tuesday morning. […]

The poll found that Biden has dropped only slightly in the national horse race against Trump, by .08 points. That mostly squares with the public narrative from the Biden campaign in the wake of the debate, as their team has labored to calm Democratic panic over Biden’s ability to beat Trump in November. Geoff Garin, one of Biden’s top pollsters, tweeted over the weekend that the campaign’s internal polling showed that the national race was mostly unchanged. “The debate had no effect on the vote choice,” he said. “The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.” Polls conducted immediately after the debate by CNN and FiveThirtyEight suggested similarly negligible gains for Trump nationally, with CNN reporting that “just 5 percent of respondents say it changed their minds about whom to vote for.”

But according to OpenLabs, that’s only part of the story. While the debate may have barely registered in national data, in their surveys of key Electoral College states where voters are paying closer attention to the campaign, Biden is doing noticeably worse. In a poll including third-party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president has fallen by around 2 points in every single core battleground—and also in states that were not even on the 2024 map last week. In the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania, Biden now trails by 7 points, compared to 5 points before the debate. He has also dropped in Michigan, where he now trails Trump by 7. OpenLabs also found that he is now losing by roughly 10 points in Georgia and Arizona, and by almost 9 points in Nevada.

The most worrisome angle to all this is that Trump is now within striking distance in a variety of states that weren’t considered campaign battlegrounds last week. Biden is now only winning by a fraction of a point in Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico—and he’s now only winning Colorado by around 2 points.

The survey also found that Biden is now losing in New Hampshire, news that aligns with a Saint Anselm College poll released Monday showing Trump suddenly winning the Granite State

Speculation abounds: *BIDEN SPOKE WITH SCHUMER, CLYBURN TODAY, WHITE HOUSE SAYS

INSURRECTION: House Democrats Consider Demanding Biden Withdraw From Race