President Biden is struggling to overcome doubts about his leadership within his own party and broad dissatisfaction with the direction of the nation, leaving him lagging behind. Donald J. Trump As their general election is about to begin, a new poll from the New York Times and Siena College reveals.
Eight months before the November election, Mr. Biden’s 43 percent support lags Mr. Trump’s 48 percent according to the national survey of registered voters.
Only one in four voters think the country is heading in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Mr. Biden’s policies have hurt them personally as his policies have helped them. A majority of voters think the economy is in bad shape. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of how Mr. Biden has handled his job reached 47 percent, higher than in Times/Siena polls at any point during his presidency.
The poll offers the president a series of warning signs about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, particularly among women, black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has best unified his party, even in the midst of an ongoing primary.
Mr. Biden traveled through early candidate states with only nominal opposition. But the poll showed that Democrats remain deeply divided over the prospect of Mr. Biden, the 81-year-old chief executive, leading the party again. About as many Democratic primary voters said Mr. Biden should not be the nominee in 2024 as he said — with opposition strongest among voters under 45.
Mr. Trump’s ability to consolidate the Republican base better than Mr. Biden’s ability to unify his own party’s base is evident in the current thinking of 2020 voters. Mr. Trump wins 97% of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his former supporters said they were voting for Mr. Biden. By contrast, Mr. Biden won only 83% of his voters in 2020, 10% of whom now say they support Mr. Trump.
“It’s going to be a very difficult decision — I’m seriously considering not voting,” said Mamta Misra, 57, a Democrat and economics professor in Lafayette, La., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. “The Trump voters are going to come out no matter what. For the Democrats, it’s going to be bad. I don’t know why they’re not thinking of anyone else.
Mr. Trump’s five-point lead in the late February survey is slightly larger than in the last Times/Siena national poll of registered voters in December. Among the likely electorate, Mr. Trump currently leads by four percentage points.
In last year’s poll, Mr. Trump led by two points among registered voters and Mr. Biden led by two points among the projected likely electorate.
One of the new poll’s most worrying findings for Mr. Biden is that the historic advantage Democrats held over working-class voters of color who did not attend college continues to erode.
Mr. Biden won 72% of these voters in 2020, according to exit polls, giving him a nearly 50-point advantage over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll shows Mr. Biden narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not earn a college degree: 47% to 41%.
An enthusiasm gap between the two parties appears repeatedly in the survey: only 23% of Democratic primary voters said they were enthusiastic about Mr. Biden – or half of the Republicans who said they were enthusiastic about Mr. .Trump. Far more Democrats said they were dissatisfied or angry that Mr. Biden is the leader of the party (32%) than Republicans who said the same about Mr. Trump (18%).
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are unpopular. Mr. Trump had a low favorable rating of 44 percent; Mr. Biden fares even worse, at 38 percent. Among the 19% of voters who said they disapprove of both likely candidates — an unusually large cohort in 2024 that pollsters and political strategists sometimes refer to as “double haters” — Mr. Biden actually led Mr. Trump, by 45 % to 33%.
The candidate who won these “double haters” won the 2016 and 2020 elections.
For now, however, discontent with the state of the country is clearly a drag on Mr. Biden’s prospects. Two-thirds of the country believe the country is heading in the wrong direction — and Mr. Trump wins 63 percent of those voters.
The share of voters who believe the nation is on the right track remains a dismal and shrinking minority, at 24 percent. Yet even that figure represents a marked improvement from the peak inflation days of summer 2022, when just 13% of voters believed the country was heading in the right direction.
“If we have Trump for four more years, we’ll get a little better economically,” said Oscar Rivera, a 39-year-old independent voter who owns a roofing company in Rochester, New York.
Mr. Trump’s policies have generally been viewed much more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. Overall, 40% of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18% who said the same about Mr. Biden’s.
Just 12 percent of independent voters like Mr. Rivera said Mr. Biden’s policies had helped them personally, compared with 43 percent who said his policies had harmed them.
Mr. Rivera, who is Puerto Rican, said he did not like the way Mr. Trump talked about immigration and the southern border, but was still considering voting for him. “Biden? I don’t know,” Mr. Rivera said. “It seems we are weak, America is weak. We need someone stronger.
Overall, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are dead even among the most prized independent voters, with 42% each.
But time and time again, the Times/Siena poll revealed how Mr. Trump cut into more traditional Democratic constituencies while maintaining his standing among Republican groups. The gender gap, for example, no longer benefits Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now evenly split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point advantage. The poll shows Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the black vote is also falling.
There are, of course, unpredictable .
The poll shows that 53% of voters currently believe Mr. Trump committed serious federal crimes, up from 58% in December. But looked at another way, Mr. Trump’s current lead over Mr. Biden rests on a significant number of voters who view him as a criminal.
The country, meanwhile, remains divided on some of the thorniest domestic and international issues.
By a narrow margin, more voters favor making it harder for migrants at the southern border to seek asylum (49 percent versus 43 percent). Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden made dueling appearances at the border this week; illegal border crossings reached record levels at the end of 2023.
As the Israel-Hamas conflict rages into its fifth month, 40 percent of voters said they sympathize more with Israel, compared to 24 percent who said they sympathize more with the Palestinians. Mr. Trump won 70% of those who primarily supported Israel; Mr. Biden won 68 percent of those who sided with the Palestinians, even though he faced demonstrations and a protest vote against his pro-Israel stance.
Philip Kalarickal, a 51-year-old anesthesiologist in Decatur, Georgia, is a Democrat dismayed by Mr. Biden’s handling of the humanitarian fallout from the conflict in Gaza.
“Joe Biden should do more to ensure that the Israeli government proceeds in a way that ensures its security, but without causing civilian casualties,” Dr. Kalarickal said, adding that he would reluctantly support Mr. Biden this fall, given that he lives in a swing state.
“I understand that my vote or lack of vote has a consequence, and I am considering the alternative and it is worse than the current situation,” Dr. Kalarickal said. “But I want to express my dissatisfaction. The way I vote doesn’t mean I like it.
The Biden campaign hopes that more voters like Mr. Kalarickal will return to their usual partisan patterns in the coming months. The return of such reluctant Democrats is one reason the Biden campaign has been optimistic that the polls would narrow, and eventually reverse, as the choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden became clearer.
Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s Republican rival, who has argued that he would lose in November, leads Mr. Biden by a margin twice that of the former president: a hypothetical 45% to 35%. But she struggled to gain traction in the primary and the poll predicted crushing losses on next week’s Super Tuesday, with 77% of Republican primary voters choosing Mr. Trump over her.
Alyce McFadden And Ruth Igielnik reports contributed.
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted on cell and landline phones, using live interviewers, February 25-28, 2024. The margin of error sampling for the presidential ballot choice question is plus or minus 3.5. percentage points among registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.