Joe Biden, newly established as the presumptive Democratic nominee with the exit of Sen. Bernie Sanders from the race, leads President Trump in several crucial battleground states, according to Microsoft News sentiment polling. These states have shown changes in sentiment towards Biden in the range of 2 to 5 percent over the past month. Since March 1, sentiment for Biden increased by 3 percent in Florida to 51 percent. In Wisconsin, sentiment increased by 5 percent and by 4 percent in Pennsylvania. Voter sentiment for Biden has increased in Michigan by 2 percent to 51 percent. Microsoft News polling also reflects tight races in Ohio, Georgia, and Texas. See the state-by-state view of voter sentiment here for Election 2020. —– Methodology Microsoft News and Microsoft Research have partnered to conduct quick reaction and tracking polls to learn more about the sentiment, knowledge and expectations around the 2020 Elections. The Microsoft News Poll uses online opt-in polls, collected from a random sample of American adults, to produce statistically valid results. In these surveys, we collected 132,097 responses from March 1 to April 9 using tools from polling firm CivicScience. We then analyzed the results to model how demographic groups answered each question, based on age, gender, race, education, location, and party identification. Answers were projected onto the estimated distribution of those demographic groups. The method is as accurate as traditional polling methods, and in this survey produced a margin of error of +- 5 percentage points
