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President Biden has fallen behind as he struggles to overcome questions about his leadership within his party and widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country. Donald J. Trump Just as the general election campaign is about to get underway, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College finds out.
With eight months left until the November election, a national survey of registered voters found that Biden’s approval rating of 43% is lower than Trump’s 48%.
Only one in four voters think the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters say Biden’s policies have personally hurt them as say they’ve helped them. A majority of voters think the economic situation is bad. Additionally, 47% of voters strongly disapprove of Biden’s handling of the job, higher than at any point during the president’s term in the Times-Siena poll.
The poll shows a variety of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including women, black and Latino voters. So far, Trump has managed to unite the party even as the primaries continue.
Mr. Biden has won early nomination states with only nominal opposition. But polls reveal deep divisions within the Democratic Party over the prospects for the 81-year-old Biden to lead the party again. A roughly equal number of Democratic primary voters say Biden should not be the candidate in 2024 and say he should be, and the opposition is stronger among voters under 45. It was the strongest.
Mr. Trump’s ability to consolidate the Republican base better than Mr. Biden unified his own party’s base is evident in the current mindset of 2020 voters. Of those who said they voted for Trump four years ago, 97% say he won, and virtually none of Trump’s past supporters say they will vote for Biden. By contrast, Biden won only 83% of voters in 2020, with 10% saying they now support Trump.
“It’s going to be a very difficult decision. I’m seriously considering not voting,” said Mamta Misra, 57, a Democrat and economics professor from Lafayette, Louisiana, who voted for Biden in 2020. Ta. It will come out no matter what. That would be bad for Democrats. I don’t understand why they don’t think about others. ”
Trump’s 5-point lead in the poll, conducted in late February, is slightly larger than the previous Times/Siena national poll of registered voters in December. Trump currently holds a 4 percentage point lead among likely voters.
Last year’s poll showed Trump with a 2-point lead among registered voters and Biden with a 2-point lead among likely voters.
One of the more ominous findings for Biden in the new poll is that the historic advantage Democrats have held with working-class voters of color who have not attended college continues to erode. is.
According to exit polls, Biden won 72% of voters in 2020, leading Trump by nearly 50 points. Today’s Times/Siena poll showed Biden with only a narrow lead among nonwhite voters without a college degree, 47% to 41%.
The excitement gap between the two parties shows up repeatedly in surveys. Only 23% of Democratic primary voters said they were enthusiastic about Mr. Biden, while half of Republicans said they were enthusiastic about Mr. Trump. Significantly more Democrats (32%) say they are dissatisfied or angry with Biden as leader than Republicans (18%) who say the same about Trump.
Both Trump and Biden are unpopular. Trump’s favorability rating was low at 44%. Biden did even worse, at 38%. Of the 19% of voters who said they did not support either of the likely candidates (a group that pollsters and political strategists sometimes call “double haters,” an unusually large group in 2024), Biden actually led Trump 45% to 33%.
Candidates who won over such “double hatred” won both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
But for now, it’s clear that dissatisfaction with the country’s current state is holding back Biden’s future. Two-thirds of Americans feel the country is heading in the wrong direction, and Trump won 63% of those voters.
The percentage of voters who believe the country is on the right track remains a dismal 24% minority. But even this number is a marked improvement from the peak of inflation in the summer of 2022, when just 13% of voters felt the country was heading in the right direction.
“If we supported Trump for four more years, the economy would be a little better,” said Oscar Rivera, a 39-year-old independent voter who owns a roofing business in Rochester, New York.
Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Biden’s. Forty percent of voters said Trump’s policies were personally helpful, compared to just 18% who said Biden’s policies were helpful.
Among independent voters like Mr. Rivera, only 12% said Mr. Biden’s policies had helped them personally, compared to 43% who said his policies had hurt them.
Rivera, who is Puerto Rican, said he doesn’t like what Trump has said about immigration and the southern border, but plans to vote for him anyway. “Biden? I don’t know,” Rivera said. “It seems we are weak, America is weak too. We need stronger people.”
Overall, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump had weak approval ratings even among valuable independent voters, each winning 42%.
But the Times-Siena poll revealed time and time again how Mr. Trump is cutting into traditional Democratic constituencies while maintaining his position within Republican groups. For example, the gender gap is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly supported Biden four years ago, are now evenly split, while men give Trump a 9-point advantage. Opinion polls show Trump ahead of Biden among Latinos, and Biden’s share of the black vote is shrinking.
Of course, there’s the unpredictable X-factor in a race in which the Republican front-runner faces four indictments, 91 felonies, and a criminal trial scheduled to begin in New York State Supreme Court at the end of March. do.
According to the poll, 53% of voters now believe Trump committed serious federal crimes, down from 58% in December. But another way to look at it is that Trump’s current lead over Biden is built on a significant number of voters who believe he is a criminal.
Meanwhile, the country remains divided on some of its most vexing domestic and international issues.
Although by a narrow margin, more voters support making it harder for immigrants at the southern border to apply for asylum (49 percent vs. 43 percent). Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden engaged in a duel near the border this week. Illegal border crossings hit a record high at the end of 2023.
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensifies into its fifth month, 40% of voters said they had more sympathy for Israel and 24% said they had more sympathy for the Palestinians. Mr. Trump won 70% of people who primarily supported Israel. Biden won 68% of Palestinian voters despite facing demonstrations and protest votes over his pro-Israel stance.
Philip Karakal, 51, an anesthesiologist from Decatur, Georgia, is a Democrat who is disappointed in Biden’s response to the humanitarian impact of the Gaza conflict.
Dr. Karakal said, “Joe Biden should do more to encourage the Israeli government to move forward on this issue in a way that ensures security without civilian casualties,” considering the following circumstances: He then added that he would reluctantly support Biden this fall. He lives in a swing state.
“I understand that there are consequences to my vote or not, and I am looking at alternatives that are worse than what we have now,” Dr. Karakal said. “But I would like to express my displeasure. The way I vote doesn’t mean I like it.”
The Biden campaign hopes to see more voters like Karakal revert to their usual partisan patterns in the coming months. The return of these reluctant Democrats is one reason the Biden campaign is optimistic that polls will shrink and eventually reverse as the choice between Trump and Biden becomes clearer. .
Trump’s Republican rival Nikki Haley, who has claimed defeat in November, leads Biden by twice the former president’s margin, 45% to 35%. But she has struggled to gain support in the primaries, with polls predicting a landslide loss on Super Tuesday next week, with 77% of Republican primary voters choosing Trump over her. is.
Alice McFadden and Ruth Igielnik Contributed to the report.
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted from February 25 to 28, 2024, using live interviewers and by cell and landline telephone. The margin of sampling error for the multiple-choice question on the presidential ballot is plus or minus 3.5. Percentage points of registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.
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