Biden takes huge lead as Trump fails on race, virus
Joe Biden has taken a commanding lead over President Donald Trump in the 2020 race, building a wide advantage among women and nonwhite voters and making deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups that have shifted away from Trump following his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new national poll of registered voters by the New York Times and Siena College.
Biden is currently ahead of Trump by 14 percentage points, garnering 50 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Trump. That is among the most dismal showings of Trump’s presidency, and a sign that he is the clear underdog right now in his fight for a second term.
Trump has been an unpopular president for virtually his entire time in office. He has made few efforts since his election in 2016 to broaden his support beyond the right-wing base that vaulted him into office with only 46 percent of the popular vote and a modest victory in the Electoral College.
But among a striking cross-section of voters, the distaste for Trump has deepened as his administration failed to stop a deadly disease that crippled the economy and then as he responded to a wave of racial-justice protests with angry bluster and militaristiwc threats. The dominant picture that emerges from the poll is of a country ready to reject a president whom a strong majority of voters regard as failing the greatest tests confronting his administration.
Biden leads Trump by enormous margins with Black and Hispanic voters, and women and young people appear on track to choose Biden by an even wider margin than they favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. But the former vice president has also drawn even with Trump among male voters, whites and people in middle age and older — groups that have typically been the backbones of Republican electoral success, including Trump’s in 2016.
Most stark may be Biden’s towering advantage among white women with college degrees, who support him over Trump by 39 percentage points.