Poll: Voters prefer Biden on almost all major issues
Joe Biden holds a 9-point lead over President Donald Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.
With just two weeks left in the campaign, Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Biden to manage the economy.
On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Biden over Trump by modest or wide margins. Biden, the former vice president, is favored over Trump to lead on the coronavirus pandemic by 12 points, and voters trust Biden over Trump to choose Supreme Court justices and to maintain law and order by 6-point margins. Americans see Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points.
Overall, Biden is backed by 50% of likely voters, the poll showed, compared with 41% for Trump and 3% divided among other candidates.Most of all, the survey makes clear that crucial constituencies are poised to reject Trump because they cannot abide his conduct, including 56% of women and 53% of white voters with college degrees who said they had a very unfavorable impression of Trump — an extraordinary level of antipathy toward an incumbent president.
His diminished standing on economic matters and law and order is a damaging setback for the president, who for much of the general election has staked his fortunes on persuading Americans that a Biden administration will leave them impoverished and unsafe.
Nor, according to the poll, have Trump’s efforts to tarnish Biden’s personal image and make him unacceptable to swing voters. Fifty-three percent of voters said they viewed Biden in somewhat or very favorable terms, compared with 43% who said the same of Trump.
A majority of voters said they saw Trump unfavorably, with 48% viewing him very unfavorably.
The margin of sampling error for the poll, which was conducted from Oct. 15 to 18, was 3.4 percentage points.
Part of the shift away from Trump on the economy may stem from voters’ urgent hunger for new relief spending from the federal government — which Trump has nominally endorsed but which he has not sought actively to extract from congressional Republicans.
Seven in 10 voters, including more than half of Republicans, said they wanted to see a new multitrillion-dollar stimulus program that includes government support for citizens and emergency help for state and local governments. There is also widespread public support for a $2 trillion renewable energy and infrastructure package that Biden has proposed as a form of economic stimulus.