Former President Donald Trump says he is the “only one” in the Republican presidential primary field to take on President Joe Biden, but a new poll indicates that the former president may have a harder time than he thinks to return to the White House.
According to an NBC News poll, former President Trump would lose to President Joe Biden – despite the economic turmoil inflicted on the United States over the last two and a half years – by four percentage points. The poll, which is technically within the survey’s margin of error, is a bad sign for President Trump and indicates that the Republicans will have a lot of work to do if he is ultimately chosen as the party’s presidential candidate.
What the Poll Says
According to the survey, which was conducted between June 16 and 20, registered voters lean towards President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch between the two candidates, with 49 percent choosing President Biden and 45 percent opting for Trump. The poll, conducted among 1,000 likely registered voters, also showed that President Joe Biden’s biggest edge is among black voters, while Trump remains popular among rural voters.
While the poll found that Trump’s popularity among voters has not increased sufficiently to put him on a path to victory next year, it did find that Republicans are rallying in greater numbers around his campaign – possibly as a result of recent indictments that have been widely criticized as politically motivated. The poll showed Trump’s support among Republican voters increase from 46 percent in April to 51 percent in June.
Voters Are Still Worried About Biden
While voters prefer President Joe Biden to former President Trump, concerns about the incumbent leader’s mental and physical health have not disappeared. The NBC News poll found that 68 percent of voters were concerned about Biden’s cognitive and physical abilities, while 55 percent expressed concern about Trump.
Earlier in June, an Economist-YouGov survey found that 45 percent of Americans overall believe that Biden’s advanced age and poor health “severely limit his ability to do the job.” Only 11 percent of voters said that Bidens’ age has “no effect at all” on his performance.
Axios also reported this month that, according to the latest Engagious/Sago focus groups, the president’s age is proving a particular problem among North Carolina’s swing voters who voted for him over President Trump in 2020. Despite that concern, however, the focus groups reflected the figures from the latest NBC News poll, showing that even voters who believe Biden is too old to be president will vote for him over President Trump.
“But although they’re hyper-focused on his older age, nine of the 11 focus group participants said they’d vote for the 80-year-old Biden in a rematch against Trump, who turned 77 on Wednesday,” Axios noted.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
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