Trump take a 5 point lead over Biden
By Dave Andrusko
Yesterday we took a look at the latest NBC News poll described by Rich Lowry as a “train wreck for Joe Biden.” The poll is so rich in details I thought we’d take another look.
The bottom line was that former President Donald Trump led President Biden 47%-42%. This is perfectly reasonable given Biden’s dismal job approval numbers: a mere 37% approve versus 60% who disapprove.
Rich Lowry summarized the situation this way: “Biden is losing to Trump by five points in the new NBC poll. Biden is getting smoked in almost every category, including having the necessary mental and physical health to be president, not, one assumes, an incidental matter when you are seeking to be president again.”
Steve Kornacki is National Political Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. On Sunday he explained how NBC News has tracked Donald Trump versus Joe Biden for five years.
Trump first went ahead in November “and now at 5 points, this is biggest lead NBC has ever had in 16 polls for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.”
Appearing on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Kornacki explained that on the baseline issue of Competency and Effectiveness, Biden led Trump by 9 points—47% to 38%—in June of 2020.
But today the numbers are not only reversed, there is a far greater gap. Trump is ahead by a whopping 16 points —48% to 32%.
This has many possible explanations. NBC News’s Mark Murray wrote “In the new poll, a combined 76% of voters say they have major concerns (62%) or moderate concerns (14%) about Biden’s not having the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term, compared with 24% who have either minor concerns (13%) or no concerns at all (11%).”
Murray writes that “Biden’s current approval rating is the lowest for any president in the NBC News poll since George W. Bush’s second term.”
In the new poll, Biden’s approval rating has declined especially among Latinos (just 35% of them now approve of his job performance), voters ages 18-34 (29%) and independents (27%).
Additionally, 36% of voters in the poll approve of Biden’s handling of the economy (down 2 points from November), 34% approve of his handling of foreign policy (down 1 point) and 29% approve of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza (down 5 points).
Dr. Todd Belt, the political management program director at George Washington University, told Kayla Gaskins
He’s really got to be concerned about the fact that he’s not polling well with the people who really delivered the presidency to him in 2020, specifically people of color and persons under 30 years old.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the survey for NBC News with Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his team at Public Opinion Strategies, says these findings reveal “a presidency in peril.”
But “Biden can take solace that we are in January and not October 2024. At this stage in prior cycles, attitudes can change,” he said.