Trump
Widens Lead After Biden’s Debate Debacle, Times/Siena Poll Finds
Donald
Trump is ahead of President Biden by six percentage points among likely voters
in a new national survey. Overall, 74 percent of voters view Mr. Biden as too
old for the job, an uptick since the debate.
June 28 to
July 2
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/poll-debate-biden-trump.html
If the 2024
presidential election were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates
were Joe Biden and Donald Trump?
Shane
Goldmacher
By Shane
Goldmacher
July 3, 2024
Donald J.
Trump’s lead in the 2024 presidential race has widened after President Biden’s
fumbling debate performance last week, as concerns that Mr. Biden is too old to
govern effectively rose to new heights among Democrats and independent voters,
a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College showed.
Mr. Trump
now leads Mr. Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters nationally, a
three-point swing toward the Republican from just a week earlier, before the
debate. It is the largest lead Mr. Trump has recorded in a Times/Siena poll
since 2015. Mr. Trump leads by even more among registered voters, 49 percent to
41 percent.
Doubts about
Mr. Biden’s age and acuity are widespread and growing. A majority of every
demographic, geographic and ideological group in the poll — including Black
voters and those who said they will still be voting for him — believe Mr.
Biden, 81, is too old to be effective.
[The poll
does not show a fundamental change in the race, but it adds to longstanding
concerns, Nate Cohn writes.]
Overall, 74
percent of voters view him as too old for the job, up five percentage points
since the debate. Concerns about Mr. Biden’s age have spiked eight percentage
points among Democrats in the week since the debate, to 59 percent. The share
of independent voters who said they felt that way rose to 79 percent, nearly
matching the Republican view of the president.
The poll
offers early empirical evidence of what many Democrats have feared: That Mr.
Biden’s faltering debate performance has further imperiled his chances against
Mr. Trump this fall. Some Democratic lawmakers and donors are raising questions
about Mr. Biden’s fitness following his struggles to finish his thoughts or
articulate a vision during the debate, and they are demanding that Mr. Biden
prove for a skeptical public that he is capable of serving until he is 86.
There were a
couple of faint glimmers of good news for Mr. Biden in the poll.
One was that
he narrowed Mr. Trump’s edge among independent voters, even if that gain was
more than offset by his erosion among Democrats and Mr. Trump’s improvement
among Republicans. Another was that the share of Democratic voters who think
Mr. Biden should no longer be the nominee ticked up, but by far less than the
rising Democratic concern about his age. The first calls from Capitol Hill
lawmakers for him to step aside came on Tuesday.
Overall,
more voters thought Mr. Biden should remain the Democratic nominee — but only
because more Republicans, perhaps emboldened after the debate, said they now
want him as their opponent.
THE NEW YORK
TIMES/SIENA COLLEGE POLL
Do you think
Joe Biden should remain the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, or should
there be a different Democratic nominee for president?
Democrats
PRE-DEBATE
52%
Remain
nominee
45
Different
nominee
POST-DEBATE
48%
47
Independents
PRE-DEBATE
21%
72
POST-DEBATE
22%
72
THE NEW YORK
TIMES/SIENA COLLEGE POLL
Do you think
Donald Trump should remain the Republican Party’s nominee for president, or
should there be a different Republican nominee for president?
Republicans
PRE-DEBATE
80%
Remain
nominee
17
Different
nominee
POST-DEBATE
83%
13
Independents
PRE-DEBATE
31%
64
POST-DEBATE
35%
58
Note: The
unlabeled segment refers to the share of voters who did not respond or who said
they didn’t know.Based on New York Times/Siena College polls of registered
voters nationwide conducted from June 20 to 25, 2024, and from June 28 to July
2, 2024.By Lily Boyce
“If this was
a boxing match, it would have been a T.K.O. in the first round — please
somebody stop this already,” George Lee, a 44-year-old health care adviser in
Brooklyn, said of watching Mr. Biden suffer rhetorical punch after punch at the
debate. “He doesn’t have his wits about him. That’s clear from last week.
They’ve been saying it for a long time, but the world saw it.”
Mr. Lee, a
Democrat, said he wished Mr. Biden would step aside but that he would still
vote for him to stop Mr. Trump. He fretted, “There’s no way he’s going to win
now.”
The poll
also showed the depth of concern for Mr. Biden’s fitness. Half of voters go
much further than thinking Mr. Biden is too old to be effective: A full 50
percent agree that his “age is such a problem that he is not capable of
handling the job of president,” including 55 percent of independent voters.
What
questions were asked? Who answers polls?The New York Times/Siena College Poll
has earned a reputation for accuracy and transparency. Our pollsters and
editors are committed to explaining our methods and answering common questions.
Read our Q. and A. and explore the full results of the polls:
Cross-Tabs:
June 2024 Times/Siena Poll of the Likely Electorate
Voters have
some concern about Mr. Trump’s age, too, but far less than for Mr. Biden’s.
After the
debate, 42 percent of voters view Mr. Trump as too old for the job, an increase
of three points from a week prior that was driven heavily by Democrats. Only 19
percent of voters said Mr. Trump was so old he was not capable of handling the
job.
One of the
more interesting findings in the poll was that men accounted for virtually all
of Mr. Trump’s post-debate gains.
Mr. Trump
has made appeals to machismo a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, making his
first public appearance after his felony conviction related to paying hush
money to a porn star a visit to a U.F.C. fight, for instance.
In the
pre-debate poll, Mr. Trump had led among likely male voters by 12 percentage
points. After the debate, his lead among men ballooned to 23 points. That
movement was particularly concentrated among younger men and men without
college degrees.
Mr. Biden’s
five-point edge among likely women voters before the debate actually ticked up
slightly, to eight points.
Those who
said they had watched the CNN debate, which was held in Atlanta, said Mr. Trump
outperformed Mr. Biden, 60 percent to 22 percent.
Only 16
percent of voters said Mr. Biden did well, and a meager 3 percent said he did
very well. In an era of intense partisanship, even Democrats felt that Mr.
Biden had flopped.
Our politics
reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to endorse or campaign for
candidates or political causes. That includes participating in rallies and
donating money to a candidate or cause.
About
one-third of Democrats said Mr. Biden did well compared to 89 percent of
Republicans who said the same of Mr. Trump.
The debate
was watched live by more than 50 million Americans, and 59 percent of voters
said they had tuned in. Only 10 percent said they had not heard about the
debate, 15 percent said they had heard about it and another 16 percent said
they had watched clips afterward.
It was that
last cohort, the clip-watchers, whose view of Mr. Biden’s age problem was the
most acute, perhaps because some of Mr. Biden’s most incoherent answers quickly
went viral.
Around 80
percent of those who watched clips or heard about the debate but did not watch
live thought Mr. Biden was too old. Voters who watched the debate live or did
not watch at all were in the low 70 percentage range.
The
Times/Siena survey before the debate had appeared more favorable to Mr. Trump
than the national average of polls at the time. One explanation had been that
Republicans had been more responsive than Democrats when called for that
survey, perhaps a sign of enthusiasm after Mr. Trump’s conviction. A higher
response rate for a particular group is not necessarily an indicator of an
inaccurate result. But even so, in this new survey, response rates between the
parties returned to their usual level of parity.
The Biden
campaign, in an internal staff memo on Wednesday, braced aides for potential
poor polling and the Times/Siena poll, in particular.
“Polls are a
snapshot in time and we should all expect them to continue to fluctuate,” wrote
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the campaign manager, and Jen O’Malley Dillon, the
campaign chair. They said internal metrics showed the race within the margin of
error. The campaign had previously released a post-debate poll showing Mr.
Biden trailing Mr. Trump, but the campaign said the margin had not changed
since before the debate.
In the
Times/Siena poll, when voters were asked about possible third-party and
independent candidates, Mr. Trump’s lead expanded by two percentage points in
the last week. Mr. Trump was ahead of Mr. Biden 42 percent to 37 percent after
the debate when the survey included six potential candidates, including Robert
F. Kennedy Jr., who earned 8 percent support. Mr. Trump had led 40 percent to
37 percent before the debate.
The 2024
race pits two nominees who are historically unpopular against each other, and
the unfavorable ratings of both candidates rose slightly after the debate. Mr.
Biden’s rose to 61 percent, and Mr. Trump’s to 55 percent.
The Biden
campaign had hoped that the debate — and seeing Mr. Trump onstage in a way he
hasn’t been seen since he occupied the White House — would pull some of the
Democratic voters who have been reluctant to support Mr. Biden in 2024 back
into the fold.
The poll,
which like all others is a snapshot in time, did not show any Democratic
consolidation.
Mr. Biden’s
standing in the poll did improve among Black voters, but it eroded among
Hispanic voters, although the sample size of both demographic groups was
relatively small in the survey.
The poll
also revealed a deep generational rift inside the Democratic Party.
When it
comes to Mr. Biden’s fitness for another term, 77 percent of Democrats under 45
think the president is too old to be effective, while only 49 percent of those
older than 45 agree.
Similarly,
56 percent of Democrats under 45 approve of Mr. Biden’s job, while 90 percent
of Democrats older than that rated him positively.
The debate
did succeed in another Biden goal: Getting voters to tune into the race. The
share of voters paying a lot of attention to the campaign was jolted up 9
percentage points in the wake of the much-discussed debate.
More voters
said in the poll that re-electing Mr. Biden in November would be a risky choice
for the country than those who said it of Mr. Trump. In the survey, 63 percent
of voters said Mr. Biden was a risky choice, compared to 56 percent who said
Mr. Trump was risky.
Roughly one
in four Democrats said Mr. Biden was a risky choice rather than a safe one;
they were nearly twice as likely to think of Mr. Biden as risky as Republicans
were to view Mr. Trump that way.
Voters had
viewed the candidates as equally risky back in April.
Mr. Biden
faces other headwinds beyond his age.
The economy
and inflation were the top issues for voters in the Times/Siena surveys both
before and after the debate, and Mr. Trump is winning voters who prioritize
those issues overwhelmingly.
Also, by a
wide margin, voters look back more fondly on Mr. Trump’s time in office than
Mr. Biden’s. Just 34 percent said Mr. Biden made the country better, while 47
percent said the same about Mr. Trump’s tenure. And for almost every
demographic group, more voters said Mr. Biden had made the country worse rather
than better. Black voters were the biggest exception.
A majority
of voters, 50 percent to 39 percent, said Mr. Trump would best handle whatever
issue they felt was the most important one facing the country.
Ruth
Igielnik, Nicholas Nehamas and Camille Baker contributed reporting.
Here are the
key things to know about this Times/Siena poll:
We spoke
with 1,532 registered voters, from June 28 to July 2, 2024.
Our polls
are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and
Spanish. About 93 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this
poll. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which
they were asked here.
Voters are
selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains
information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter,
allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party,
race and region. For this poll, we placed more than 190,000 calls to more than
113,000 voters.
To further
ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those
willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic
groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without
a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of our
respondents and the weighted sample on the methodology page, under “Composition
of the Sample.”
The poll’s
margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 2.8
percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the
views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges
create additional sources of error. When computing the difference between two
values — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as
large.
You can see
full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about
how and why we conduct our polls, you can see answers to frequently asked
questions and submit your own questions here.
Shane
Goldmacher is a national political correspondent, covering the 2024 campaign
and the major developments, trends and forces shaping American politics. He can
be reached at shane.goldmacher@nytimes.com. More about Shane Goldmacher
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