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Biden Takes Dominant Lead as Voters Reject Trump on Virus and Race
A New York Times/Siena College poll finds that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is ahead of the president by 14 points, leading among women and nonwhite voters and cutting into his support with white voters.
By Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and
NYT Upshot/Siena College poll
of registered voters
50%
Biden
36%
Trump
14%
Other
NYT Upshot/
Siena College poll
of registered voters
50%
Biden
36%
Trump
14%
Other
Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has taken a commanding lead over President Trump in the 2020 race, building a wide advantage among women and nonwhite voters and making deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups that have shifted away from Mr. Trump following his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new national poll of registered voters by The New York Times and Siena College.
Mr. Biden is currently ahead of Mr. Trump by 14 percentage points, garnering 50 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Mr. Trump. That is among the most dismal showings of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and a sign that he is the clear underdog right now in his fight for a second term.
Mr. Trump has been an unpopular president for virtually his entire time in office. He has made few efforts since his election in 2016 to broaden his support beyond the right-wing base that vaulted him into office with only 46 percent of the popular vote and a modest victory in the Electoral College.
But among a striking cross-section of voters, the distaste for Mr. Trump has deepened as his administration failed to stop a deadly disease that crippled the economy and then as he responded to a wave of racial-justice protests with angry bluster and militaristic threats. The dominant picture that emerges from the poll is of a country ready to reject a president whom a strong majority of voters regard as failing the greatest tests confronting his administration.
Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by enormous margins with black and Hispanic voters, and women and young people appear on track to choose Mr. Biden by an even wider margin than they favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump in 2016. But the former vice president has also drawn even with Mr. Trump among male voters, whites and people in middle age and older — groups that have typically been the backbones of Republican electoral success, including Mr. Trump’s in 2016.
If the 2020 presidential election were held today, whom would you vote for?
Trump ahead
Biden ahead
All reg. voters
+14 pct. pts.
(n=1,337)
Female
+22
GENDER
(725)
Male
+3
(612)
18 to 34
+34
AGE
(245)
35 to 49
+23
(287)
50 to 64
+1
(356)
65 and older
+2
(400)
Black
+74
RACE AND
EDUCATION
(150)
Hispanic
+39
(145)
+28
White, college
(436)
+1
White
(870)
+19
White, no coll.
(427)
Democrat
+85
PARTY
IDENTIFICATION
(466)
Independent
+21
(401)
Republican
+85
(341)
+83
Very liberal
IDEOLOGY
(177)
Somewhat liberal
+69
(260)
Moderate
+33
(332)
Somewhat conservative
+32
(281)
Very conservative
+73
(195)
All reg. voters
Biden +14
(n=1,337)
GENDER
Female
Biden +22
(725)
Male
Biden +3
(612)
AGE
18 to 34
Biden +34
(245)
35 to 49
Biden +23
(287)
50 to 64
Trump +1
(356)
65 and older
Biden +2
(400)
RACE AND EDUCATION
Black
Biden +74
(150)
Hispanic
Biden +39
(145)
White, college
Biden +28
(436)
White
Trump +1
(870)
White, no coll.
Trump +19
(427)
PARTY IDENTIFICATION
Democrat
Biden +85
(466)
Independent
Biden +21
(401)
Republican
Trump +85
(341)
IDEOLOGY
Very liberal
Biden +83
(177)
Somewhat liberal
Biden +69
(260)
Moderate
Biden +33
(332)
Somewhat conservative
Trump +32
(281)
Very conservative
Trump +73
(195)
Arlene Myles, 75, of Denver, said she had been a Republican for nearly six decades before switching her registration to independent earlier this year during Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial. Ms. Myles said that when Mr. Trump was first elected, she had resolved to “give him a chance,” but had since concluded that he and his party were irredeemable.
“I was one of those people who stuck by Nixon until he was waving goodbye,” Ms. Myles said. “I thought I was a good Republican and thought they had my values, but they have gone down the tubes these last few years.”
Ms. Myles said she planned to vote for Mr. Biden, expressing only one misgiving: “I wish he was younger,” she said.
Most stark may be Mr. Biden’s towering advantage among white women with college degrees, who support him over Mr. Trump by 39 percentage points. In 2016, exit polls found that group preferred Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Trump by just 7 percentage points. The poll also found that Mr. Biden has narrowed Mr. Trump’s advantage with less-educated white voters.
The exodus of white voters from the G.O.P. has been especially pronounced among younger voters, an ominous trend for a party that was already heavily reliant on older Americans.
Fifty-two percent of whites under 45 said they supported Mr. Biden while only 30 percent said they supported Mr. Trump. And their opposition is intense: More than twice as many younger whites viewed the president very unfavorably than very favorably.
Tom Diamond, 31, a Republican in Fort Worth, Texas, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump but would do so with real misgivings. He called the president a “poor leader” who had mishandled the pandemic and said Mr. Biden seemed “like a guy you can trust.” But Mr. Trump held views closer to his own on the economy, health care and abortion.
“Part of you just feels icky voting for him,” Mr. Diamond said. “But definitely from a policy perspective, that’s where my vote’s going to go.”
Some unease toward Mr. Trump stems from voters’ racial attitudes. According to the poll, white voters under 45 are overwhelmingly supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement, while older whites are more tepid in their views toward racial justice activism. And nearly 70 percent of whites under 45 said they believed the killing of George Floyd was part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African-Americans rather than an isolated incident.
What’s striking, though, is that even among white seniors, one of Mr. Trump’s strongest constituencies, he has damaged himself with his conduct. About two-fifths of whites over 65 said they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of both the coronavirus and race relations.
Mr. Trump retains a few points of strength in the poll that could offer him a way to regain a footing in the race, and the feeble condition of his candidacy right now may well represent his low point in a campaign with four and a half months still to go. In 2016, Mr. Trump often trailed Mrs. Clinton in national polls by slimmer margins, and ultimately overcame her lead in the popular vote with razor-thin victories in key swing states.
His approval rating is still narrowly positive on the issue of the economy, with 50 percent of voters giving him favorable marks compared with 45 percent saying the opposite. Should the fall campaign become a referendum on which candidate is better equipped to restore prosperity after the pandemic has subsided, that could give Mr. Trump a new opening to press his case.
The president is also still ahead of Mr. Biden among white voters without college degrees, who hold disproportionate influence in presidential elections because of how central the Midwest is to capturing 270 electoral votes.
Yet if Mr. Trump still has a significant measure of credibility with voters on the economy, he lacks any apparent political strength on the most urgent issues of the moment: the pandemic and the national reckoning on policing and race.
Nearly three-fifths of voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including majorities of white voters and men. Self-described moderate voters disapproved of Mr. Trump on the coronavirus by a margin of more than two to one.
Most of the country is also rejecting Mr. Trump’s call to reopen the economy as quickly as possible, even at the cost of exposing people to greater health risks. By a 21-point margin, voters said the federal government should prioritize containing the coronavirus, even if it hurts the economy, a view that aligns them with Mr. Biden.
Just a third of voters said the government should focus on restarting the economy even if that entails greater public-health risks.
That debate could become the central focus of the campaign in the coming weeks, as coronavirus outbreaks grow rapidly in a number of Republican-led states that have resisted the strict lockdown measures imposed in the spring by Democratic states like New York and California.
The public also does not share Mr. Trump’s resistance to mask wearing. The president has declined to don a mask in nearly all public appearances, even as top health officials in his administration have urged Americans to do so as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus. In the poll, 54 percent of people said they always wear a mask when they expect to be in proximity to other people, while another 22 percent said they usually wear a mask.
Just 22 percent said they rarely or never wear a mask.
Mr. Trump’s job approval on race relations was just as dismal. Sixty-one percent of voters said they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of race, versus 33 percent who said they approved. By a similar margin, voters said they disapproved of his response to the protests after the death of Mr. Floyd.
Mr. Trump has sought several times in the last month to use demonstrations against the police as a political wedge issue, forcing Democrats to align themselves squarely either with law-enforcement agencies or with the most strident anti-police demonstrators.
The poll suggested most voters were rejecting that binary choice, as well as Mr. Trump’s harsh characterization of protesters: Large majorities said they had a positive overall assessment of both the Black Lives Matter movement and the police.
More voters feel strongly about Mr. Trump than they do about Mr. Biden
Voter impressions of ...
Trump
Biden
Very
favorable
Very
unfavorable
Very
favorable
Very
unfavorable
27%
50%
26%
27%
ALL REG. VOTERS
(n=1,337)
NONWHITE
Age 18 to 29
11%
68%
21%
15%
(88)
Age 30 to 44
15%
61%
29%
14%
(100)
Age 45 to 64
22%
62%
45%
19%
(150)
Age 65 and older
13%
70%
60%
16%
(85)
WHITE
Age 18 to 29
23%
46%
4%
28%
(89)
Age 30 to 44
17%
58%
20%
22%
(156)
Age 45 to 64
36%
39%
22%
35%
(305)
Age 65 and older
42%
38%
27%
38%
(320)
Voter
impressions of:
Trump
Very
favorable
Very
unfavorable
n=
27%
50%
ALL REG. VOTERS
(1,337)
NON-WHITE
Age 18 to 29
11%
68%
(88)
Age 30 to 44
15%
61%
(100)
Age 45 to 64
22%
62%
(150)
Age 65 and older
13%
70%
(85)
WHITE
Age 18 to 29
23%
46%
(89)
Age 30 to 44
17%
58%
(156)
Age 45 to 64
36%
39%
(305)
Age 65 and older
42%
38%
(320)
Voter
impressions of:
Biden
Very
favorable
Very
unfavorable
n=
26%
27%
ALL REG. VOTERS
(1,337)
NONWHITE
21%
15%
Age 18 to 29
(88)
29%
14%
Age 30 to 44
(100)
45%
19%
Age 45 to 64
(150)
60%
16%
Age 65 and older
(85)
WHITE
4%
28%
Age 18 to 29
(89)
20%
22%
Age 30 to 44
(156)
22%
35%
Age 45 to 64
(305)
27%
38%
Age 65 and older
(320)
The picture of Mr. Biden that emerges from the poll is one of a broadly acceptable candidate who inspires relatively few strong feelings in either direction. He is seen favorably by about half of voters and unfavorably by 42 percent. Only a quarter said they saw him very favorably, equaling the share that sees him in very negative terms.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, is seen very favorably by 27 percent of voters and very unfavorably by 50 percent.
Harry Hoyt, 72, of York County in Southern Maine, said he has sometimes voted for Republican presidential candidates in the past and cast a grudging vote for Mrs. Clinton in 2016. He felt better this time about his plan to vote for Mr. Biden.
“Biden would be a better candidate than Trump, simply because he’s a nice person,” Mr. Hoyt said. “One of the most important things to me is the character of the man in charge of our country.”
Significantly, one group that saw Mr. Biden as far more than just acceptable was black voters. Fifty-six percent of black respondents in the poll said they saw Mr. Biden very favorably, a far more enthusiastic judgment than from any other constituency.
The limited passion for Mr. Biden among other Democratic constituencies does not appear to be affecting his position against Mr. Trump. Though only 13 percent of people under 30 said they had a very favorable opinion of the former vice president, that group is backing Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by 34 percentage points.
Nicholas Angelos, a 20-year-old voter in Bloomington, Ind., who said he supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, said he would vote for Mr. Biden as the “lesser of two evils.” He said he believed the former vice president would “try his best,” in contrast to Mr. Trump, whom he described as “an autocrat” and “anti-science.”
“We all have to compromise,” said Mr. Angelos, who described himself as very liberal. He added of Mr. Biden, “I don’t think he’s anything special.”
For the moment, voters also appear unpersuaded by one of the primary attack lines Mr. Trump and his party have used against Mr. Biden: the claim that, at age 77, he is simply too old for the presidency. Mr. Trump, 74, has mocked Mr. Biden’s mental acuity frequently over the last few months and his campaign has run television advertisements that cast Mr. Biden as absent-minded and inarticulate.
But whatever reservations voters may have about Mr. Biden’s age, three in five said they disagreed with the claim that he was too old to be an effective president. The percentage of voters who agreed, 36 percent, exactly matched Mr. Trump’s existing support in the presidential race.
Lindsay Clark, 37, who lives in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, was among the voters who said she would probably vote for Mr. Trump because she was unsure Mr. Biden was “physically and mentally up to the task” of being president. But Ms. Clark expressed little admiration for Mr. Trump, whom she called unpresidential.
Ms. Clark, who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016, said she was hard-pressed to name something she really liked about Mr. Trump, eventually settling on the idea that he expressed himself bluntly.
“I was just trying to think if I could think of something off the top of my head that I was like, ‘Yes, I loved when you did that!’” she said of Mr. Trump. “And I kind of just can’t.”
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Voters Trump Is Losing
In six states crucial to the president’s election hopes, our polling found a potentially decisive shift in opinion.transcript
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Voters Trump Is Losing
Hosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Alexandra Leigh Young, Sydney Harper and Eric Krupke; with help from Robert Jimison; and edited by M.J. Davis Lin and Lisa Chow
In six states crucial to the president’s election hopes, our polling found a potentially decisive shift in opinion.
- michael barbaro
From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”
Today: This fall’s presidential race is likely to be decided by a handful of battleground states won by President Trump in 2016. Nate Cohn on what a major new poll from The New York Times found about how voters in those states view the president and his Democratic rival.
It’s Thursday, June 25.
Nate, the last time we talked about polling in the presidential race, it was still the Democratic primary. It was back in November. And the polling that you all did showed that no matter which Democrat Donald Trump would face, he was doing OK.
- nate cohn
Yeah. The polls showed that Donald Trump was pretty competitive. He was in a close race against all of his major Democratic rivals. He wasn’t always ahead. He was losing to Joe Biden, for instance. But he was in a pretty good and highly competitive spot, even at a moment where he was facing imminent prospect of impeachment in the House of Representatives. And so after all of that, for him still to be so close, it sure seemed like he was in a pretty decent position, all considered.
- michael barbaro
So what was your thinking going into this next big poll that you all just finished?
- nate cohn
Well, I did not think that Donald Trump would be doing quite as well as he had done in October. And there have been a lot of polls over the last couple of months indicating that Joe Biden has had a gradually building lead, both nationwide and in the battleground states. But given that we had such good results for the president in the past, I thought there was a pretty distinct possibility that we would show a race that was, you know, even if not extremely close, still competitive.
- michael barbaro
And what happened once this polling got underway?
- nate cohn
Well, we get the results back every morning from the last night of interviews. And from the start, it was pretty clear that this was a very different set of polling data.
The first morning’s numbers were really bad for Trump. And you know, it’s something you try not to pay any attention to. It’s just one day of interviews, and the numbers change a lot. But you know, the next morning, and the next morning after that, it was bad again. And in the end, we polled for 14 days. And for all 14, the numbers were bad for the president. And they never got better.
- michael barbaro
And just how bad?
- nate cohn
Really bad. We did seven different polls. We have a national survey that showed Joe Biden leading by 14 points, 50 to 36 percent.
- michael barbaro
Wow.
- nate cohn
We have six battleground state polls. These are the six states that Donald Trump won in 2016, but that were most closely fought last time — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. And here again, Joe Biden had a considerable lead. He was up 9 percentage points across those six states, including a lead of at least six points in every one of them.
- michael barbaro
Wow. So that is legitimately, seriously bad polling data for the incumbent President, Donald Trump?
- nate cohn
Yeah. I mean, if you look back historically, it is really hard to find an example of an incumbent president sitting in such a bad position heading into re-election. It’s worse than Jimmy Carter in 1980 at this stage, or even in the final polls, for instance.
- michael barbaro
Huh.
- nate cohn
There’s just not much for the president to hang his hat on here.
- michael barbaro
So let’s talk about what the battleground state polls show, specifically about why voters seem to be souring on President Trump. What’s the story that the data from these battleground state polls tell you about why that is?
- nate cohn
The polls tell a really simple story. They say that voters across the battleground states have concluded that the president has failed to meet the most important crises of our political moment. They think he’s failed on the coronavirus. They think he’s failed on race relations. And they think he’s failed in the protests, and so on. And as a result, there has been a rebellion among white voters in the battleground states, the very voters that four years ago were responsible for the president’s persistent strength in these states.
- michael barbaro
So before we get to the revolt of these white voters, which seems very important, let’s talk about these issues that voters do not think the president has properly managed and maybe go through a few of them, one by one.
- nate cohn
I think it’s worth just breaking them down into two groups. One is the coronavirus. Voters disapprove of the way he’s handled it by a wide margin. 56 percent of voters in the battleground states say they disapprove, includes a significant number of people who voted for him in 2016. And it’s not just that they take issue with the president’s effectiveness. There’s an underlying disagreement between the president and the electorate about priorities.
- michael barbaro
What do you mean?
- nate cohn
So we asked voters whether they thought the federal government’s priority should be to limit the spread of the coronavirus, even if it hurts the economy. Or if they think the federal government’s priority should be to restart the economy, even if it increases the risk to public health. And voters in the battleground states said, by a 20-plus point margin, that they thought the priority ought to be to limit the spread of the coronavirus. And incredibly, that even includes the people who have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus over the last few months.
- michael barbaro
I want to pause on this. Because this seems really fascinating. By 20 percent, voters favor conquering the virus over reopening the American economy. Because that is the complete opposite of the message from the president.
- nate cohn
It’s the complete opposite. And it really goes against so much of what we usually assume about American politics, right? It’s the economy, stupid. But here we have a rare issue where voters very explicitly are prioritizing something else. I can’t think of another comparison for it except war.
- michael barbaro
Hm.
- nate cohn
You know? In World War II, it’s not like if you had asked voters, what should be the priority, you know, helping the economy or beating the Japanese, that they would be like, oh, it’s the economy, stupid.
- michael barbaro
Right. You’re saying with lives on the line, voters are telling us in this poll that the economy takes something of a backseat.
- nate cohn
That’s right.
- michael barbaro
What seems interesting is that the president is banking on an economic recovery, or goodwill over his management of the economy prior to the pandemic, to win re-election. But it sounds like from what you’re saying, that wouldn’t necessarily give him a boost, because voters are not prioritizing the economy the way they usually do.
- nate cohn
Yeah. I mean, he’s right to think that’s his advantage. I mean, astonishingly, given the overall economic numbers, voters in the battleground states say they approve of the president’s handling of the economy, by a 15-point margin. That’s a —
- michael barbaro
Wow.
- nate cohn
— what, 30 points different than his overall approval rating? And the reason for that disconnect is just fundamental and simple. The coronavirus is more important. And they may appreciate what he’s done on the economy. But in this case, emphasizing the economy isn’t what they’re looking for.
- michael barbaro
So what about the second big issue that you said voters disapprove of the president’s management of, which is race and the protests over race and policing?
- nate cohn
Right. Just a whole spectrum of different issues relating to race and criminal justice and the protests, the president’s ratings are even worse on those issues than they are on the coronavirus. And here again, the president has this fundamental disconnect with the electorate, where his priorities aren’t the same as theirs. I mean, we asked whether they would rather have a candidate who says that we need to be tough on protests that go too far, or whether they would rather have a candidate who says we need to focus on the cause of protests, even when they go too far. And voters said, by a 40-point margin, that they would rather have the candidate who focuses on the cause of the protests, even when they’re going too far. And it’s also including a significant number of people who backed the president.
- michael barbaro
So the gulf between how the president is talking about these protests and how voters across the battleground states are thinking about these protests is enormous.
- nate cohn
Yeah. And I wouldn’t have guessed that, personally.
- michael barbaro
So Nate, how does this disapproval of how the president’s handling these major crises, how does that explain this concept you touched on earlier of white voters revolting against the President?
- nate cohn
Well, a pretty significant number of white voters in the battleground states do not side with the president, either his handling of the coronavirus or on these racial issues. And these are now the issues that are most important in the minds of voters in the battleground states. And so while maybe in 2016, a lot of these voters were focused on who would do the best on trade or immigration, now what’s on their mind is who is the best job handling protests and coronavirus. They’re not so sure they want to vote for the President anymore. In our poll, nearly 15 percent of the people who say they voted for President Trump in 2016 aren’t willing to say they support him against Joe Biden. And 7 percent of those voters say there’s almost no chance they’ll vote for him again.
- michael barbaro
So 7 percent of his base plans on flipping, and 15 percent is very open to flipping, because of the way he has handled all of these complex questions over the past few months or year?
- nate cohn
Yeah. And I should note they may not necessarily flip. They could vote third party. They could stay home. They have other options here. But a meaningful number of them at the moment say they would back Joe Biden for president.
- michael barbaro
Wow.
- nate cohn
So at the moment, the president’s coalition, this core base of support among white voters that got him to victory in 2016, just is not there for him anymore. It has suffered serious defections, mainly at its periphery, you know, not the people wearing MAGA hats. But the sort of people who voted for Obama in 2012, backed Donald Trump in 2016 because they liked what he had to say about illegal immigration and trade, are not putting up with him right now.
- michael barbaro
And who is this voter, this white voter who is now turning on the president four years later?
- nate cohn
It’s a pretty broad group of white voters. It includes college-educated white voters. It includes white voters without a college degree. It includes young voters. Young white voters now back Joe Biden by 20 points.
- michael barbaro
Wow.
- nate cohn
It includes older white voters. At the moment, the president is losing among seniors, who were the bedrock of his support in 2016.
- michael barbaro
Wow. You know, Nate, I’m curious if there’s a prototypical swing state region that you think of as being illustrative of everything that you’re describing here, this alienation, this disapproval of the way the president is handling everything since we last polled these battleground states.
- nate cohn
Well, I could indulge you on that question. I could tell you about how in the Green Bay region of Wisconsin or in Northeast Pennsylvania or something that Joe Biden is now ahead, and Donald Trump won there big in 2016. But you know, frankly, it’s true everywhere. There are no exceptions here. There’s no place where the president’s holding up fairly well and I can be like, that’s the place where it’s particularly bad. There’s no region that epitomizes this more than any other. I could choose anywhere and tell you that the president appears to be losing ground among white voters. It’s true in the battleground states. It’s true nationally. It’s true everywhere.
- michael barbaro
We’ll be right back.
OK. Nate, let’s talk about what these polls, both the national poll, but especially the six battleground state polls, have told us about Joe Biden and why he seems to be leading so handsomely over Donald Trump.
- nate cohn
You know, my honest answer is that I think our answers on Joe Biden are kind of boring.
- michael barbaro
Boring how?
- nate cohn
You know, the voters, they like Joe Biden. He’s got a 50 percent favorability rating. It’s fine. They don’t seem to have a very strong opinion of him either way. They do think he would do a better job than Trump on almost every issue, except the economy and China. But there’s not a groundswelling of support for him. And there’s not particularly deep opposition to him either. Instead, 55 percent of voters say there is at least some chance they would vote for him. So that to me indicates that a pretty broad swath of the electorate is at least considering the guy at this stage.
- michael barbaro
Hm. And what you’re describing is an alternative, rather than a charismatic figure that voters are looking to with great ardor.
- nate cohn
I think that’s right. A lot of the divides that you might think about in American politics today, like between young and old, and so on. They don’t really even exist on Joe Biden. Everyone just kind of has a modestly favorable view of him. And there are many circumstances in which maybe that’s not the exact candidate you’d want to run for president. But it may be exactly the right candidate at a time when a clear majority of the electorate has resolved that it does not want to reelect the current president.
- michael barbaro
Nate, you’re painting a scenario in which Joe Biden seems to be thriving as a reflection of President Trump’s weakness. And that’s a familiar concept in presidential campaigns. But I went through the battleground state poll that you sent me about 24 hours ago. And I was really struck by the number of issues on which respondents to the poll said they thought that Joe Biden would do a better job than President Trump. It was immigration. It was protests. It was the pandemic. And so how do we know whether that is a reflection of President Trump, or a true sense that people believe Joe Biden is inherently the best person to do those things?
- nate cohn
You know, it’s a great question. Unfortunately, the way that we’ve asked this question to voters, I don’t think we can disentangle whether they think Joe Biden would be good versus believing that Donald Trump is bad. We’re just asking voters whether they think Joe Biden would do a better job than Donald Trump. And so I don’t think we can pull out the varying effects of Joe Biden and Donald Trump on that. I do think, though, that one thing that stands out to me is how much the results of those questions matches up with Trump’s approval rating on those issues, which at least to me implies that it’s more about the president than it is about Joe Biden.
- michael barbaro
Hm. In other words, disapproval of the president is kind of mirrored in the data of approval or the belief that Joe Biden would do something better?
- nate cohn
That’s right.
- michael barbaro
This data clearly suggests there’s not a tremendous amount of passion around Joe Biden. And yet, he’s developed this very significant lead over President Trump. And so I wonder whether that means that the electability case for Joe Biden, which was debated endlessly throughout the primary, has kind of proven to be exactly what Joe Biden and the people around him said it would be now that there’s a two person race, Biden versus Trump.
- nate cohn
Well, I don’t think we can run the counterfactual and see whether Elizabeth Warren would be leading today if she had been the Democratic nominee or Bernie Sanders. What I think we can say is that the case for Joe Biden’s electability is playing out here. The case for Joe Biden’s electability was always that a sufficient number of voters do not want to re-elect the president, so choose someone who maximizes the appeal of the Democratic candidate with the broadest number of voters. I don’t know whether that means that a different candidate would be doing better or worse than Joe Biden. But what we do know is that Joe Biden is up nine points across battleground states that voted for Trump last time. He’s up 14 points nationwide. And he would have a distinct chance of winning by the widest margin of any candidate in my lifetime.
- michael barbaro
Well, Nate, that leads me to a very important and delicate question that involves you and me. Because four years ago, we were having a conversation about polling. And Donald Trump was down in those polls. I was the host of a different show called “The Run Up.” You were the first guest on the first episode. And the title of that episode was, “Could Hillary Clinton Win in a Landslide?” So I think you know where this question is now headed.
- nate cohn
How could I not?
- michael barbaro
So what is different about this lead, if anything, that makes you and should make us trust it?
- nate cohn
Well, I think we should all approach this with a lot of humility. I mean, polling is tough the day before the election. It’s really tough five months before the election. The national environment has changed a lot in the last five months. It can change a lot in the next five months. That said, I think that this lead is different from Hillary Clinton’s lead. It doesn’t mean that Donald Trump can’t win. But it is different. It’s different in two ways. One, it’s a wider lead. Joe Biden is up by more. If the polls were just as wrong as they were in 2016, and the election were held tomorrow, Joe Biden would still win. I mean, the polls could be more wrong. There’s no law of polling that says that 2016 is the worst case scenario or something. But this is a bigger advantage than Hillary Clinton had down the final stretch. It’s a more persistent advantage. And it’s wider than even her peaks. The second difference is a methodological one, which is that we are much more focused on the battleground states this time than we were in 2016. In 2016, we had really good national polling. And we did not have very much good polling in the battleground states. We have resolved to flip that around, to try and deal with the things that went wrong four years ago. None of that ensures that our results will be perfect if the election were held tomorrow. But it is a reason why it is less likely that these polls would be fundamentally wrong in the same way that so many state polls were fundamentally wrong four years ago.
- michael barbaro
A key caveat, however, seems to be that the lead that Joe Biden has developed over these past few months has occurred when he has been largely invisible. Right? I mean, this has been a very unusual campaign in the sense that the President is as visible as he’s ever been, every day — at the White House, on Twitter and now campaign rallies. Whereas Joe Biden has been largely quarantined and kind of offstage. Inevitably, that will change. And I wonder how much that could begin to alter some of the dynamics of these polls.
- nate cohn
I think that it absolutely could begin to help narrow the race. And this was the pattern in 2016, by the way. There were these moments of the race when the talk was always about Donald Trump. And he would get in these fights. The news would be all about how Donald Trump said this ridiculous stuff. All these Republicans would be criticizing him. And then Hillary Clinton would have this lead. And then two weeks later, something would happen, when it was her emails, or the “deplorables” line, or random health scares, and so on. And Hillary Clinton’s lead would fall right back down to a more competitive race. And I think it is certainly possible that if voters focus as much on Joe Biden at any point in this election cycle as they focused on Hillary Clinton, that would probably lead to a tighter race than the one we have now.
- [music]
- michael barbaro
Perhaps put more simply, what you’re saying is that campaigning in absentia, essentially, is working for Joe Biden. And it’s working pretty well.
- nate cohn
Absolutely. I mean, the fundamentals of the race right now are that Donald Trump is really unpopular. Donald Trump is the defining feature of the race. That adds up to a big win for Joe Biden right now. If that formulation changes, and Joe Biden is just as important in the minds of voters as Donald Trump, maybe Joe Biden’s lead would shrink a lot. Maybe it would shrink a little. I don’t know. But what I can say is that this particular dynamic is working out really well for Joe Biden.
- michael barbaro
Nate, thank you very much. And I want to warn you that we are going to be doing this a lot for the next five months, but not too much.
- nate cohn
Thank you for having me. And I am looking forward to it.
- michael barbaro
We’ll be right back.
Here’s what else you need to know today.
- archived recording (joyette holmes)
Good afternoon. Today the Sun County grand jury did return an indictment against Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William Bryant.
- michael barbaro
On Wednesday, four months after a 25-year-old black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was chased down and killed while jogging in South Georgia, three white men were indicted on charges ranging from malice murder to false imprisonment.
- archived recording (joyette holmes)
This is another positive step, another great step for finding justice for Ahmaud, for finding justice for this family and the community beyond.
- michael barbaro
Local police were slow to arrest and charge the three men, prompting the first in a series of public protests in the past few months over the extrajudicial killing of black Americans. And the U.S. recorded nearly 37,000 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, the highest single-day total since the pandemic began. With infections rising so quickly, the City of Houston said it was running out of intensive care beds. The governor of Texas urged residents to stay inside. And Washington and North Carolina said they would require that masks be worn in public.
- archived recording (ned lamont)
We’re going to have a quarantine on visitors from those states that have a positivity rate north of 10 percent over a seven day moving average. So it could change a little bit over time. Hopefully, those states that are so grave — Florida, Texas, Arizona — will come back with a lower infection rate.
- michael barbaro
In the Northeast, where infection rates have declined, the governors of three neighboring states — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — said they would require a two-week quarantine for travelers coming from states where cases are surging.
- archived recording (ned lamont)
What that means in terms of quarantine will be enforced differently in different states. What we want to do here in the state of Connecticut is one, if you come up from those states and you haven’t tested, and you haven’t had a negative test, you’re coming up here, you’ve got to quarantine for 14 days.
- michael barbaro
That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.
New York Times/Siena College polls
We asked thousands of voters across the country about President Trump, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter and more.
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June 24, 2020
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June 25, 2020
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June 25, 2020
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June 26, 2020
Here are more results and our explanation of the methodology for the poll.
Our 2020 Election Guide
The Latest
Joe Biden keeps his distance from the potentially divisive concept of adding seats to the Supreme Court if Democrats retake the Senate. Read live updates.
Paths to 270
Joe Biden and Donald Trump need 270 electoral votes to reach the White House. Try building your own coalition of battleground states to see potential outcomes.
Voting Deadlines
Early voting for the presidential election starts in September in some states. Take a look at key dates where you live. If you’re voting by mail, it’s risky to procrastinate.
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