Despite his age and deep dissatisfaction with how he has handled the economy and a host of other issues, President Biden has trailed Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states a year before the 2024 US election, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College.
In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden lost by a margin of four to ten percentage points to Mr. Trump, his likely Republican rival. According to the poll, Biden leads by two percentage points only in Wisconsin.
Mr. Biden carried all six battlegrounds in 2020, so the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.
According to the Times/Siena survey, the majority of voters say Mr. Biden’s policies have harmed them personally. The survey also reveals that the coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. As two-thirds of the electorate see the country moving in the wrong direction, demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested.
Mr. Biden has a single percentage point advantage among voters under 30, his advantage among Hispanic voters is down to single digits, and his advantage in urban areas is half as big as Trump’s. In fact, while women continued to favor Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by double the margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled Democratic gains in recent years.
Mr. Trump is registering 22 percent support in these states from black voters, a record for a Republican in presidential politics.
All told, Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six points in Georgia, five points in Arizona, five points in Michigan, and four points in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden led by two points in Wisconsin.
There was a remarkable racial realignment between the two parties, since the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest.
The poll found that both Biden and Trump are deeply unpopular. However, voters who feel the nation is on the wrong track are taking their frustrations out on Trump.
“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, 53, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, Pa., who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but now supports Mr. Trump, albeit with reservations. It would be much better if we had a leader who could act as a positive role model for the country, but I at least think Trump knows what he’s doing.
He still has a year for his turn around. Economic indicators are up even if voters disagree with them. Mr. Trump is still polarizing. And he will aim to shore up his demographic weak spots with a well-funded campaign. Despite Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings at the time, Democrats managed to limit their losses in 2022.
Though Mr. Trump has been indicted four times for crimes and faces trial in 2024, the survey shows that Mr. Biden begins the next year with a deficit. Mr. Trump would be able to win more than 300 Electoral College votes if the poll results were the same next November, far above the 270 needed to win the presidency.
In addition, voters across all income levels felt that Mr. Biden’s policies had hurt them personally, while they credited Mr. Trump’s policies with helping them. Voters gave Mr. Trump a 17-point advantage for helping them, while Mr. Biden a disadvantage of 18 points for hurting them.
Being the oldest president in American history looms as a glaring liability for Mr. Biden, who turns 81 later this month. In the poll, 71 percent of respondents said he was “too old” to be an effective president — an opinion shared by all demographics and geographical groups, including 54 percent of Biden’s own supporters.
Compared to this, only 19 percent of Trump supporters viewed him as too old, and 39 percent of the electorate as a whole.
As for the president’s age and mental acuity, 62 percent of respondents say he lacks “mental sharpness” to be effective.
In the economy, voters favored Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden by 59 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin of any issue. On economic matters, Mr. Trump was preferred by both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, across every age bracket and every income level of the electorate.
In the 2024 US election, nearly twice as many voters said economics would determine their vote as social issues, such as abortion or guns, and those economic voters favored Mr. Trump by a wide margin of 60 percent to 32 percent.
The findings come after Mr. While the president continues to tour the country to brag about the economy, Biden’s campaign has run millions of dollars in ads promoting his record. Mr. Biden on a trip to Minnesota said on Wednesday, “Bidenomics is just another way of saying the American dream!”
It’s clear that voters disagree. Only 2 percent of voters say the economy is doing well.
Despite years of inflation and high interest rates that have made mortgages much less affordable, voters under 30 — a group that strongly voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 — voted for Mr. Trump by an extraordinary 28 percentage point margin on the economy. In three states, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, none of the poll respondents in that age group rated the current economy as excellent. Less than one percent of those poll respondents rated the current economy as excellent.
“I had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, 25, a liquor packager in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump.” I guess our borders aren’t very secure as time goes on because of inflation, the Ukrainian war and recent events in Israel.
Now, Mr. Henry plans to support Mr. Trump.
He hasn’t done anything to benefit us,” said Patricia Flores, 39, of Reno, Nev., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but won’t back him again.
Biden’s path to victory in 2020 had been rebuilding the blue wall in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and then expanding the map in the growing Sun Belt states of Arizona and Georgia.
Mr. Biden’s support is higher in industrial northern states than in the more diverse Sun Belt, according to the poll.
Vulnerabilities abound in him.
On immigration, Mr. Trump topped Mr. Biden by 12 points, on national security, and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 11 points. In spite of the fact that 58 percent of voters supported more economic and military aid to Ukraine – which aligns with Mr. Biden’s policy – that did not appear to benefit the president when it came to broader questions about his ability to handle foreign affairs.
The 33-year-old Travis Waterman, who worked in home restoration in Phoenix, voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but views him as weak now and prefers Mr. Trump.
On national security, men preferred Mr. Trump 62 percent to 33 percent, while women preferred Mr. Biden 47 to 46 percent.
Mr. Biden’s strongest issue was abortion, where voters trusted him more than Mr. Trump by nine percentage points.Moreover, he maintained voter trust by an even slimmer margin of three points over Mr.. Trump on an issue like “democracy.”
It is not unusual for Mr. Biden to suffer from poor poll results. In fact, the president’s job approval rating was about the same in October 2022 during the run-up to the midterm elections. By painting Republican candidates as extremists, his party was able to win one seat in the Senate and lose fewer seats than expected in the House.
Currently, there seems to be a decrease in the number of voters who are put off by Mr. Trump’s behavior and bold statements. This has been a unifying factor for the diverse Democratic group for quite some time now. However, recent statistics show that only 46 percent of voters consider Mr. Biden to have a suitable temperament for the presidency, just slightly more than the 43 percent who feel the same about Mr. Trump. As we approach 2024, Mr. Trump will likely be in the spotlight once again, including his ongoing legal trials. Voters might be reminded of why they initially disliked him.
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