“Will this be the thing that will cause his voters to abandon him? How much will this hurt his numbers?” There are questions that I, as a pollster, have been asked a lot over the past eight years. And the answers are almost always the same: you know, as crazy as it sounds, no single event can move the numbers that much.
That’s the question I get asked all the time about Donald Trump. But since last week’s debate, the focus has shifted. I am now being asked if President Biden’s terrible performance on stage represents a breaking point with his voters.
The severity of the president’s apparent decline in the debate may have shocked many, but voters have long sounded the alarm about Mr. Biden’s stamina and mental toughness. Mr. Biden’s polling was terrible even before he set foot in Atlanta.
While the debate looked like a political earthquake, the polls so far have only registered a mild shock. Mr. Biden was behind before, and now he’s behind even more.
As the American people ponder the choice before them, pollsters have taken on a new, and in my view largely unfair, level of importance in the monumental decision facing Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party. Regardless of the polling data, the answer to the question of whether Mr. Biden should seek four more years in office seems clear. Although the Democratic Party appears to be playing a wait-and-see game, the hope is that the polls will allow it to pull an emergency break.
A flurry of public polls over the past few days presents a mixed picture of the outcome of the debate. Found CNN There is no movement His Trump-up six-point lead from the pre-debate, while the Times/Sienna poll showed Mr. Biden losing among registered voters by nine points — he was down by six points in the Times/Sienna, until you realize. Voting before debate. CBS News polls show decrease the same— from a one-point lead to a three-point deficit — in margins among likely voters in battleground states for Mr. Biden, relatively modest and within the margin of error.
We saw a similar shift after the first Barack Obama-Mitt Rome debate in 2012. On the day of the debate, Mr. Obama held a three-point lead over Mr. Romney, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average, while a week later, in the race Mr. Four and a half points swung in Romney’s direction. The polls for the current race could continue to go badly for Mr. Biden as Democratic leaders grow increasingly excited about being at the top of the ticket.
In considering why polling for Mr. Biden has dipped but not completely cratered in the weeks since the debate, a simple explanation comes to mind from a focus group of disappointed Biden voters I conducted.
“Show of hands: Do you think Joe Biden is up to the task of being president by 2028?”
Focus group respondents took a second to process the question. Not a single hand went up. This was not a focus group from this week, assessing the performance of Mr. Biden’s candidacy in the wake of a disastrous debate performance; That was from the spring of 2023.
Democratic strategies for weathering the storm of Mr. Biden’s performance have changed over time. After a day or two of debate, it was simple: the party officials would put their heads down and take power. Voters were told by the campaign and its surrogates that Mr. Biden simply had a “bad night.” Nothing to see here, move on.
Voters, for their part, don’t seem to be buying it. No amount of talking points could convince Americans that they had not seen what they saw on that stage. Some 72 percent of voters Said shortly after the debate, he did not believe Mr. Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president.
Mr. Biden’s standing in the pre-election debates already included a widespread view that he had lost a step. Voters are more related to About Mr. Biden’s age than he is about Mr. Trump’s criminal convictions. they knew That his age is more than 80 years.
Voters didn’t think Mr. Biden had it Endurance, strength Or mental sharpness before debate night. A large section of the electorate was deeply concerned about him mental acuity Before “we beat Medicare” entered the lexicon.
This is why turning to polls to force Mr. Biden’s hand is ill-advised. It is hard to know where there might be a point of return for the campaign given its continued and growing loss of support. Mr. Biden may also be inoculated by a sudden polling drop of more than a few points because of the way our current deep polarization has frozen our politics. For better or worse, not about Mr. Biden’s candidacy to him As much as He is not Donald Trump. In 2020, Mr. Biden 62 percent of voters won who said neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump had the physical and mental health to serve as president. While Mr. Biden lost among voters who mostly voted to support his preferred candidate, he won decisively among voters who said their vote was more “against” the opponent.
What happened a week ago Thursday is now a test of how much it will take for Mr. Biden’s voters to break with their candidate. The bottom, of course, could still fall out, and Mr. Biden could drop out of the race.
But I think back to the May 2023 focus group, where not a single participant thought Mr. Biden was capable of serving another four years. At the end of the session, I asked the group if they intended to vote for Mr. Biden again.
Almost all said in one way or another that they would.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a contributing opinion writer, Republican pollster and moderator of Opinion’s focus groups.
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