New poll finds Biden catching up to Trump
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is catching up to former President Donald Trump’s polling lead, highlighting just how close the 2024 presidential election will be, according to a new poll from the New York Times and Siena College.
Trump leads Biden by just one percentage point, with the two candidates at 46% and 45% respectively. The survey is a significant boost for the incumbent president, who has been lagging behind Trump in recent polling.
An earlier New York Times and Siena college poll released in March saw Trump leading Biden by 5 percentage points, at 48% and 43% respectively.
But Biden appears to be shoring up support among Americans who voted for him in the 2020 elections. Eightynine percent of his 2020 supporters say they would vote for him now, compared with 83% who said the same from the earlier poll. Trump still commands strong support at 94% among his 2020 supporters, but that’s a drop from 97% in the March poll.
Biden, who has seen falling support among Black and Latino voters, has started to make gains with those voters as well, a key coalition behind his 2020 victory. His support with those voters, however, still isn’t as high as it was in 2020, according to the poll.
And while age continues to be a major concern for Biden – 69% of voters in the poll say he is too old to be an effective president – that concern has fallen among voters older than 65.
But other campaign issues continue to pose troubles for Biden. Trump is leading Biden on the economy and immigration according to the poll.
On the economy, 64% approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared with 63% who disapproved of Biden’s handling of it. And on immigration, 50% of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the issue, compared with 64% of voters who disapproved of Biden’s job.
The poll was conducted with 1,059 registered voters and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.