Early Polls Show Biden, Democrats Face Uphill Fight
With the holidays behind us and the Iowa caucuses approaching, the nation’s attention is turning toward this year’s presidential election as new polls suggest President Biden and the Democrats face uphill battles to victory.
On the heels of the new numbers, top Biden-Harris reelection campaign officials hosted a press call to preview some steps they will take as part of what Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez called an “aggressive push in early 2024 to mobilize the winning coalition that will reelect” the president and vice president.
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, the president is, as Fox News wrote, “hemorrhaging support from Black, Hispanic, and young voters.” Among those first two groups, compared with data from 2020 captured by Pew Research, the poll showed Biden’s support down a respective 29 and 25 percentage points.
Among voters younger than 35, meanwhile, the data showed him trailing former President Donald Trump by four points. The younger demographic was instrumental in delivering him the White House in 2020.
The findings come with important caveats. For example, to the extent that support for Biden has eroded, the numbers suggest a greater embrace of third-party candidates rather than movement in the direction of Trump.
However, 44 percent of Trump voters ranked their enthusiasm for his candidacy
at a 10 out of 10, versus just 18 percent of Biden supporters.
A survey released by Gallup at the end of December found Biden’s approval rating hovering around 39 percent.
Gallup notes that former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump had slightly higher ratings heading into the year they sought reelection, 43 and 45 percent, respectively, while all of the other past seven presidents were above 50 percent at this point in their tenures.
Another survey, which was released on Monday by The Washington Post/University of Maryland, found that one-third of U.S. adults believe that Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020.
The survey was meant to explore evolving views about the deadly ransacking of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. On that topic, opinion is moving “in a more sympathetic direction to Trump and those who stormed the Capitol” according to the Post.
At the same time, the paper wrote, “most Americans have not bought into that revised version of events” and Jan. 6 remains a political liability for the former president heading into 2024. For example, most Republicans said they believe punishments for those who breached the Capitol were either “fair” (37 percent) or “not harsh enough” (17 percent).