New polling suggests significant Biden lead, why that may not be enough

The coronavirus pandemic, a severe economic downturn and the widespread demonstrations in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody would pose a serious political challenge to any President seeking re-election. They are certainly posing one to US President Donald Trump.

His approval rating has fallen to negative 12.7 percentage points among registered or likely voters, down from negative 6.7 points on April 15, according to FiveThirtyEight estimates. And now a wave of new polls shows Joe Biden with a significant national lead, placing him in a stronger position to oust an incumbent President than any challenger since Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992.

He leads the President by around 10 percentage points in an average of recent live-interview telephone surveys of registered voters. It’s a four-point improvement over the six-point lead he held in a similar series of polls in late March and early April. Since then, Bernie Sanders has left the Democratic race, the severity of the coronavirus pandemic has became fully evident, and the President’s standing has gradually eroded.

The erosion has been fairly broad, spanning virtually all demographic groups. But in a longer-term context, the President’s weakness is most stark in one respect: his deficit among women. Women were supposed to carry the first female major-party nominee to victory four years ago, as many assumed that Trump’s treatment of women, including allegations of sexual assault, would prove to be his undoing. But women might be his undoing this time. Trump trails Biden by 25 points among them, far worse than his 14-point deficit four years ago. He still leads among men by 6 points in the most recent polls, about the same margin as he led by in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Over the shorter term, the decline in the President’s standing has been particularly pronounced among white voters without a college degree, helping to explain why the Trump campaign has felt compelled to air advertisements in Ohio and Iowa, two mostly white working-class battleground states where Trump won by nearly 10 points four years ago. In the most recent polls, white voters without a

Joe Biden

college degree back the President by 21 points, down from 31 points in March and April and down from the 29-point lead Trump held in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Trump didn’t just lose support to the undecided column; Biden ticked up to an average of 37 per cent among white voters without a degree. The figure would be enough to assure Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates. In the most recent polls, white college graduates back Biden by a 20-point margin, up four points since the spring. It’s also an eight-point improvement for the Democratic nominee since 2016, and a 26-point improvement since 2012.

Biden has also made some progress toward redressing his weakness among younger voters. Voters ages 18 to 34 now back Biden by a 22-point margin, up 6 points from the spring and now somewhat ahead of Hillary Clinton’s lead in the final polls of 2016.

Remarkably, Biden still leads by seven points among voters 65 and over in the most recent surveys, despite the kind of racial unrest that led many of these voters to support Republican candidates at various points in their lifetimes.

Perhaps more surprising in light of recent events is that Biden has not made substantial gains with non-white voters. He leads among them by 46 points in the most recent polls, up a mere percentage point from the polls conducted in March and April.

It’s still behind the 50-point margin held by Clinton in the final weeks of the 2016 race. Most pollsters do not break out non-white voters in much depth because of the small sample size, making it hard to explore the precise sources of Biden’s relative weakness. But for now, it seems reasonable to assume that his struggles are most acute among young non-white voters and non-white men, given the overall national figures.

Of course, five months remain until the presidential election.

There is plenty of time for the race to swing in Trump’s favour, just as it did in the final stretch of the

2016 campaign.

If the race does revert toward the President, as it did four years ago, he could quickly find himself back within striking distance of squeaking out a narrow win.

His relative advantage in the Electoral College compared with the nation as a whole, or possibly among likely voters compared with registered voters, means that he doesn’t need to gain anywhere near

10 points to get back within striking distance.

In the final national polls of registered voters in 2016, Trump trailed by around an average of 5 points. It was close enough.

New York Times