President Biden faces signs that Democratic voters are starting to rally behind him despite lingering questions about the country's direction, the economy and the president's age, according to a new poll from The New. , which has all but erased Donald J. Trump's lead in early polls. The York Times and Siena College.
Biden and Trump are now effectively tied, with Trump leading 46% to 45%. This is an improvement for Biden from late February, when Trump held a commanding lead of 48% to 43%, just before he was nominated as the Republican nominee.
Biden's rise appears to be largely due to his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters. He has a larger share of voters who approve of him in 2020 than he did a month ago. Since then, the gap has narrowed, although Mr. Trump had the support of far more former voters than the president (97% vs. 83%). Biden currently has 89% of his 2020 supporters, compared to 94% for Trump.
The tight poll results are the latest evidence in the 2024 election campaign that both sides are bracing for an excruciatingly close race. The past two presidential elections were decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, and this one could be just as close. In a country so evenly divided, even the slightest change in approval ratings can be decisive.
Beneath the close contest, many of the fundamentals of the race appear to have changed little.
The percentage of voters who think the country is heading in the wrong direction remains high at 64%. Almost 80% of voters, including a majority of Democrats, still rate the country's economic situation as “fair” or “poor.” And both Biden and Trump remain unpopular for well-known reasons. Most voters think Biden is too old. The majority believe Trump committed serious federal crimes.
“So-and-so,” said Beth Prevost, 59, a hairdresser and independent voter from Windsor Locks, Conn., summing up many people's feelings about the rematch. She leans toward Biden as “the lesser of two evils,” she said.
“You can recover from bad policies, but you can't recover from bad hearts,” Prevost said. “And Donald Trump has a bad heart.”
The investigation was conducted just before Trump's historic criminal trial in New York City, the first for a former U.S. president. He is charged with charges related to falsifying records related to hush money payments to porn stars. The case is one of four related to felony charges against Trump, but it is the only one currently scheduled to go to trial before the election.
But only one in four voters said they were still paying very close attention to the former president's legal woes, despite the possibility that the Republican candidate could face prison time. Ta.
The Biden campaign has already begun advertising in battleground states, hoping that the possibility of a second term for Trump will prompt reluctant Democrats to return to their typical partisan stance. are doing. There's some early evidence that that's happening.
Biden's support among white voters has remained flat over the past month, but his support among black and Latino voters has been slowly increasing, although it remains below traditional Democratic levels. Biden was doing better in suburban areas and among women than he was a month ago, but weaker among men. Although younger voters remain vulnerable, older voters have become a source of relative strength for Democratic presidents.
The poll's overall margin of error was 3.3 percentage points. However, the results between subgroups are statistically unreliable due to the small number of respondents within the subgroups. Still, the poll shows Biden performing best among nonwhite voters of the past three Times/Siena polls since December.
But Mr. Agee remains a major political player for Mr. Biden.
69% of voters still think the 81-year-old Democrat is too old to be an effective president. Trump, who will turn 78 in June, will become the oldest president in American history if elected. But voters did not have similar doubts about his ability to do the job, with just 41% saying he was too old.
There was one notable change last month. Among voters 65 and older, the share of voters who think Biden is too old has decreased significantly.
Russell Wood, 67, a retired Democrat and military veteran who lives in Los Angeles County, said he noticed a noticeable change in Biden's energy level. He was disappointed that Biden skipped the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview, but was pleased with Biden's performance afterward.
“He did a really great job at the State of the Union, and since then, it's like he's become a different Joe Biden,” Wood said. “I know he's been campaigning every day. There is,” he added. I have no complaints there. ”
The economy continues to be a stumbling block for the president, who is trying to launch a “bottom-up, middle-out'' policy under the banner of “Bidenomics.'' Young voters are particularly dissatisfied, with more than 85% rating the economy as “poor” or “fair.”
Voters in the poll have almost completely reversed ratings of Trump and Biden's handling of the economy, with 64% favoring Trump's handling of the issue as president and 63% favoring Trump's handling of the issue as president. disapprove of Biden's current approach to this issue.
Immigration gave Trump another biggest advantage among the many issues voters asked about in the poll. At the end of last year, border crossings reached a record high. While there was a narrow margin of approval for Trump's handling of immigration issues as president, 64% of voters disapproved of Biden's efforts on these issues.
Luis Campino, a 50-year-old independent voter who immigrated from Colombia and now lives in Highland, New York, said there are “dangerous” people crossing the border. “They're coming in like it's nothing,” he added.
Campino said he voted for Biden in 2020 but planned to vote for Trump as a “lesser evil,” and concerns about crime and immigration played a part in his decision.
Polls give Biden higher marks than Trump on his ability to unite the country and his handling of race relations and the pandemic.
But as the Ukraine war enters its third year since Russia's invasion and Israeli strikes following Hamas's terrorist attacks have increased the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, voters are increasingly concerned about how to respond to foreign conflicts. Mr. Trump's evaluation significantly increased.
Only 36% approve of how Biden is handling these conflicts, a weakness especially among younger voters. Only 4% of voters under 45 strongly approve of his work on these international issues.
Danny Gogas, a 23-year-old bartender and server in Burbank, California, is strongly considering staying home on Election Day to protest Biden's handling of the Gaza conflict.
“I really hate Donald Trump and I don't want him to be president again,” said Gorgas, a Democrat. “That's why I would vote for Biden again. But other than that, I can't think of a good reason to vote for him.”
Generational differences in foreign affairs were striking. While voters of all ages rated Trump similarly, Biden received a far worse rating from voters under 45, with 70% of them disapproving. Among people over 45, a smaller majority, 53%, disapproved.
Biden has made the potential for Trump to undermine democratic governance after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. But so far, an equal number of respondents (31%) say Biden and Trump are “good for democracy.” Forty-five percent of respondents said Trump is “bad for democracy,” only slightly more than those who said the same about Biden.
The same poll also found that roughly equal numbers of voters rated Trump and Biden as “dangerous choices” for the country.
The survey did not ask about potential third-party candidates. But about 5% of voters appear to be dissatisfied with the choice between Trump and Biden, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat-turned-independent who is vying for votes across the country. He volunteered the names of other potential candidates.
It's not yet clear how the looming criminal trial will affect Trump, with 37% saying they are paying little or no attention to it.
Still, a majority of voters (58%) consider the charges that he falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to be very serious or somewhat serious. Opinion was predictably divided along partisan lines, but a majority of independents in particular viewed the charges as at least somewhat serious.
Even more interesting is the gender gap on this question.
Women are twice as likely as men, 40 percent to 20 percent, to view accusations related to porn stars as very serious. Men were twice as likely as women to think the charges were not serious at all (30% vs. 15%).
Ruth Igielnik, Alice McFadden and camille baker Contributed to the report.
Here's what's important to know about how this Times/Siena poll was conducted:
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We spoke to 1,059 registered voters from April 7th to 11th, 2024.
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Our polls are conducted over the phone using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. In this study, more than 95 percent of respondents contacted their girlfriends by cell phone.
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Voters for the survey are selected from a list of registered voters. This list includes information about the demographic characteristics of all registered voters, ensuring that you have the right number of voters for each party, race, and region. The poll involved approximately 127,000 phone calls to more than 93,000 voters.
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To further ensure that the results reflect the electorate as a whole, not just those willing to participate in the poll, we looked at underrepresented groups among survey respondents, such as those without a college degree. give more weight to respondents from certain demographic groups. More information about respondent characteristics and weighted samples can be found under Sample Composition on the methodology page.
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The survey's margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should most often reflect the opinions of the entire population, but many other challenges create additional sources of error. When calculating the difference between two values (such as a candidate's lead in a race), the margin of error is doubled.
Complete results and detailed methodology can be found here. If you'd like to learn more about how and why we conduct surveys, you can find answers to frequently asked questions or submit your own question here.