New polls suggest erosion of Trump’s support
US PRESIDENT LANGUISHES IN NEGATIVE TERRITORY OVER HANDLING OF PANDEMIC, FLOYD’S DEATH
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 reelection. They are certainly posing one to 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.
Biden ahead
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 become fully evident, and the president’s standing has gradually eroded.
The president sparked another uproar Tuesday with a morning tweet endorsing the baseless conspiracy theory that a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo, seen on video being pushed to the ground by police last week, could have been part of a “set up” coordinated by anti-fascist demonstrators.
Trump’s speculation originated on a conspiracy theory website and was not supported by any evidence. His musings on Twitter drew a rebuke from the Buffalo man’s lawyer. Two Buffalo police officers have been charged with assault in the episode after footage showed them shoving Martin
Gugino to the ground and blood pooling on the sidewalk below his head.
Poor rating among women
While Trump’s erosion of support has been fairly broad, 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 majorparty 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 six points in the most recent polls, about the same margin as he led by in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.
Joe Biden is in a stronger position to oust an incumbent president than any challenger since Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992.
Drop in white voter share
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 workingclass battleground states where Trump won by nearly 10 points four years ago.
In the most recent polls, white voters without a 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.