Trump's lead is shrinking, but Biden is still sinking
Recent polls show voters are concerned over Biden’s ability to do the job, and they prefer Trump’s policies. They also show most Americans are dreading Biden v Trump, the sequel.
WASHINGTON – “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective” shouts a recent New York Times headline. According to a Times / Siena College poll “even his supporters worry about his age, intensifying what has become a grave threat to his re-election bid.”
And another Times headline is perhaps a more ominous warning for the President. “No Matter Race, Age or Gender,” the Times reported, “More Voters Say Trump’s Policies Helped Than Biden’s.”
Headlines and polls have for some time now been focused on President Biden’s age. But as the Times article notes, “The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was ‘just too old’ to be an effective president.”
Voters, as the Times/Siena poll reported, are also much more likely to support former President Trump’s policies. “Despite holding intensely and similarly critical opinions both of President Biden and of his predecessor,” the survey found, “Americans have much more positive views of Donald J. Trump’s policies than they do of Mr. Biden’s”
Even as Biden marches inexorably towards the inevitable Democratic Party nomination for President — and possibly closer to Trump — voters, even voters of his own party, are increasingly worried about his ability to do the job.
“The misgivings about Mr. Biden’s age cut across generations, gender, race and education,” write Lisa Lerer and Ruth Igielnik in the Times, “underscoring the president’s failure to dispel both concerns within his own party and Republican attacks painting him as senile. Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent expressed a belief that he could not do the job.” In contrast, “Voters have not expressed the same anxieties about Donald J. Trump.”
While some polls show Biden shrinking “Trump’s Edge,” the Times reports, “voters still view Donald J. Trump more favorably and have dour views of the economy.” Overall, the Times/Siena survey found, 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s policies.
That very same poll observed that the “share of voters who view the nation as headed in the wrong direction remains a high 64 percent. Almost 80 percent of voters still rate the nation’s economic conditions as fair or poor, including a majority of Democrats.”
The only bright side for the Biden campaign is that “both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump remain unpopular, for familiar reasons. Most voters think Mr. Biden is too old. A majority believe Mr. Trump has committed serious federal crimes.”
Yet despite the “good news” for President Biden that Trump’s lead is “shrinking,” the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent – more than enough to erase any possible “tightening” of the race. And on the “bad news” front – Biden remains almost historically unpopular – with his aggregate approval (or disapproval) sinking, now below 40%. He has not been above 50% since before the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

And while most national polls show Trump with only a slight lead over Biden many of these polls don’t include Robert Kennedy Jr. Many political strategists believe that Kennedy, a Democrat, will siphon more votes from Biden than Trump, an assessment Trump shares. "If I were a Democrat, I'd vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden because he's frankly more in line with Democrats," Trump said in a video released by his campaign last Thursday.
In three recent polls that included Kennedy he has been the choice of an average of almost 12% of those expressing a preference. And in polls that feature Kennedy, Trump holds a larger lead over Biden than polls that have Biden and Trump head-to-head — an indication that more Democrats may be ready to abandon Biden than Republicans willing to abandon Trump.
Many voters, however, are unlikely to get the opportunity to vote for Kennedy, though he could be a spoiler in the several battleground states. While Kennedy recently told CNN that he would have “no problem” getting on the ballot in all fifty states – so far he has qualified for the ballot on only one, solidly red Nevada— though his campaign recently announced that they had enough signatures to get on the ballots of Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska and North Carolina.
Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, called Kennedy a “chaos factor,” in a recent CNN opinion piece. As if an election featuring a Biden-Trump rematch didn’t already have a chaos factor of “10!” But if Kennedy really does want to be a factor he’ll have to get on the ballot in other swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Stay tuned.