With the twin albatrosses of the pandemic and the cratered economy hanging around his neck, President Trump seems to have staked his entire re-election bid on his claims to be the "law and order" candidate in a nation gripped by civil unrest.
But new CNN and SSRS polling shows that tack is failing and failing hard in the state of Wisconsin, where the city of Kenosha has been the latest flashpoint in the fight against police brutality that has swept the country since the beginning of the summer.
Trump is down by significant margins in the state, which many see as key to his victory, as it was in 2016.
Overall, Biden leads Trump by a whopping 10 percentage points among likely voters in Wisconsin, 52% to 42%. And when it comes to Trump's signature "law and order" focus, while the numbers are tighter, Trump again loses decisively.
When asked about the situation in Kenosha, which has been gripped by violence in the wake of the police shooting of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, and the subsequent murder of two protestors at the hands of a White supremacist gunman, Wisconsin voters rated Trump's handling of the event abysmally: 42% approved of his performance, while 54% disapproved, a 12 point spread.
Asked about Joe Biden's response to the events in Kenosha, likely Wisconsin voters rated him favorably by 6 points--42% disapprove, while 48% approve.
Wisconsinite's also see Biden as better equipped when it comes to "law and order" in general by similar margins as well. He is seen as having a clear plan to solve the nation's problems by a 6-point margin over Trump (49% to Trump's 43%) and more suited to keeping Americans safe by a 5-point margin (50% to 45%).
And when it comes to the issues of managing the pandemic and handling racial unrest, Biden blows Trump out of the water by double-digit margins: by 13- and 17-point margins, respectively. Wisconsin voters are evenly split on economic and so-called "stamina" issues.
The round of polling also looked at North Carolina, where the two candidates are far more evenly split, but where Biden still leads in most categories.
On Twitter, people were pleasantly surprised by the numbers.
But many weren't surprised at all, and the polling indicative of just how fully Trump has failed many of his voters.
And others were regarding the polls with caution--particularly given the way similarly positive polling for Hillary Clinton shook out in 2016.
CNN's polling is among the first conducted entirely after the release of journalist Bob Woodward's taped conversations in which the President admitted to underplaying the pandemic and lying about it to the American people, suggesting that the revelations may be affecting voters' decisions.
