Poll finds Biden leading Trump ahead of RNC, DNC

WASHINGTON— Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continues to lead President Donald Trump in national polling, besting the president by 9 points in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey released Sunday found that 50%of those polled would vote for Biden if the election were held today versus the 41% of those who would vote for Trump.

The findings come a day before the Democratic National Convention and a week before the Republican National Convention, where both Bid en and Trump areexpected to accept their parties' presidential nomination.

The Aug. 9-12 poll also found that nearly 60% disapprove of Trump's handling of the coronavirus and 53% of those surveyed say he didn't take the threat seriously at the beginning and continues to not handle it well.

Back in July, before the poll was conducted, Trump told Axios t hat Americans “are dying, that's true. And it is what it is,” after Swan questioned him about the average number of daily deaths climbing back to 1,000 per day.

The United States has reached more than 5.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 169,000 deaths, making the U.S. the global leader in both cases and deaths, according the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The poll surveyed 900 registered voters and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

While nationally leading Trump, the poll found Biden behind Trump on issues of the economy and crime, with more than 40% believing Trump would better handle t hose issues over Biden.

Despite polling behind Trump in those two issues, Biden outdid Trump in nearly every other issue, including foreignpolicy, immigration, health care and race relations. Forty-nine percent of those polled also said Biden has the ability to bring the country together as opposed to the 26% of people who say Trump does.

Thirty-nine percent of registered voters said they had positive feelings about Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, who also had the lowest percentage of people with negative feelings about them (35%) out of anyone on the Democrat and Republican presidential tickets. Forty-five percent said they had negative feelings about Biden

The survey found 40% had positive feelings about Trump while 52% said they had negative feelings about him. Thirty- nine percent of the respondents had positive feelings about Vice President Mike Pence while 44% had negative feelings.