Donald Trump angry at WSJ poll saying that he would lose to Biden: A Wall Street Journal poll last week found that former President Donald Trump would lose head-to-head against President Biden, leading to an angry rebuke from Trump.
Donald Trump Is Angry
The presidential general election is more than 18 months away, with the first voting in primaries and caucuses not scheduled until next January. But there are still polls of the general election.
One of them was released on Friday by the Wall Street Journal. It found, like most polls in recent months, that former President Donald Trump has the lead in the Republican primary contest, although unlike some polls it has Trump below 50 percent.
Per the poll, Trump had 48 percent support, followed by Florida Gov. Ron Desantis (24 percent), former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (5 percent), Sen. Tim Scott (3 percent), and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (2 percent.) “Undecided” has 13 percent; all candidates named in the survey besides DeSantis have either officially announced their candidacy, or announced an exploratory committee, in Scott’s case.
Several other potential candidates — Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin, Kristi Noem, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and Chris Sununu — registered 1 percent or less.
The poll also found that in a potential head-to-head contest, DeSantis leads President Biden 48 percent to 45 percent- while in a potential Trump-Biden rematch, Biden leads Trump by 3 percent. Both are close to the poll’s margin of error.
However, that poll drew the ire of Trump, who ripped it on Truth Social.
“In the Polls, I am beating Biden everywhere, by a lot, except in the Globalist inspired Wall Street Journal, one of the worst, and most partisan, media outlets anywhere,” Trump wrote on the social network. “It was that way with them in 2016, until I beat Crooked Hillary. Now they are using the same Fake Playbook, that I beat Ron DeSanctimonious easily, but Biden is close. All other media outlets have me beating both by a lot. Don’t buy their Bull…. They are FAKE NEWS!!!”
To the extent that the Wall Street Journal has a reputation as being “partisan,” it certainly hasn’t been in an anti-Republican fashion.
Trump is also wrong that every other poll has him winning. The Quinnipiac poll, taken in March, has Biden leading Trump 49-45. A Yahoo News poll at the end of March had Biden up by 2 points over Trump, while recent Harvard-Harris and Economist/YouGov polls had Trump ahead.
That Harvard-Harris poll did have Trump over 50 percent in the GOP primary contest, with 55 percent support, which placed him ahead of DeSantis (20 percent), Pence (7 percent), Haley (4 percent), Ramaswamy (2 percent), and Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, and Marco Rubio (1 percent each.) When asked who would be favored in a Trump-free race, DeSantis leads with 46 percent, followed by Pence with 14 percent and Haley and Ramaswamy with 6 percent each.
That poll had Biden with 37 percent support, against several candidates — Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Gavin Newsom — who are highly unlikely to run in 2024. In the event of Biden not running, Harris has the lead with 21 percent, followed by Clinton (13 percent), Sanders (11 percent), and Buttigieg, Newsom, and Warren (7 percent each.)
A USA Today poll, meanwhile, looked at how Trump’s criminal indictment and other legal woes have affected his popularity and election chances.
“Trump’s criminal indictment on financial charges in New York and the prospect that he may face additional indictments elsewhere on various charges doesn’t shake his core supporters. Two-thirds of his voters say his unprecedented legal peril doesn’t make a difference to them,” the newspaper said.
By a 7-to-1 margin, Trump voters from 2020 say the indictment makes them more likely to support Trump in 2024, as opposed to less likely.
Once again, the election is very far away, and the importance of general election polling data this far off is limited.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
