Biden leads Trump in early 2020 poll | Democratic super PAC spending $17 million on TV ads

Reuters

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in a new Politico/Morning Consult poll about the 2020 presidential election.

A plurality of registered voters, 44%, said they’d choose Biden in the election, while 37% of voters said they would vote for Trump. Biden ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, has been floated as a 2020 contender, and himself has said he’s not ruling out a third try. Morning Consult surveyed 1,993 registered voters from July 26 to July 30 for its poll.

Super PAC spending: The Washington Post reports the top Senate Democratic super PAC is spending $17 million to reserve airtime for television commercials in six battleground states in August, with its eye on winning the majority in the November midterm elections.

Senate Majority PAC officials told the Post that they are making late summer reservations in four states where Democrats are running for reelection and Trump won by a wide margin: Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia. The two others are Republican-held seats they are trying to flip: Nevada and Tennessee.

Trump, meanwhile, is planning to visit Ohio on Saturday to stump for Republican special congressional election candidate Troy Balderson, according to Cleveland.com. Balderson is running against Democrat Danny O’Connor in a closely watched race. Trump won the Ohio district by 11 points, and a loss by Balderson could provide more evidence of a Democratic wave.

White House weighs refugee reduction: The Trump administration is considering a second sharp reduction in the number of refugees who can be resettled in the U.S., according to the New York Times.

Last year, Trump set the cap at 45,000, a historic low. Under one plan currently being discussed, no more than 25,000 refugees could be resettled in the U.S. next year, a cut of more than 40% from this year’s limit. It would be the lowest number of refugees admitted to the country since the creation of the program in 1980, the Times says.