That's according to a new NBC News national poll conducted after President Joe Biden's abysmal debate performance and before a gunman opened fire on former President Donald Trump and rally-goers in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The presidential race is steadily becoming more competitive, with Biden trailing the former president. The poll showed Donald Trump winning by two points.
The result was within the poll's margin of error, the same margin as in April. In the expanded vote that included third-party candidates, Biden had a 3-point lead, roughly unchanged from April.
Still, the survey sheds light on the impact the debate and its aftermath have had on the president and his party, though it is unclear how it will shift public opinion in a nation shocked by Saturday's shooting.
Polls show that more than 60% of Democrats About 80% of all voters want another candidate as their party's presidential candidate. They are concerned about Biden's mental and physical health.
And the Democratic Party's popularity has declined, hitting an all-time low in the 30-year history of the NBC News poll.
still The 2024 head-to-head matchup was, at least, relatively unchanged. That moment was driven in part by voters' feelings about Trump as well as Biden. The majority of voters continue to While he has a negative view of the former president, Trump faces a deficit against Biden Regarding the question Temperament, honesty and reliability.
Another reason the election outcome didn't change was the extent to which partisans remained stuck in their choices, with 71% of respondents saying the debates had no effect on how they would vote in November.
And a third explanation is that the debate simply confirmed voters' existing perceptions of Biden, said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster at Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the survey with Jeff Horwitt, a Democrat at Hart Research Associates.
“The numbers change as new information is presented,” McInturff said. “Voters have been trying to tell us for a long time that they have concerns about Biden serving a second term.”
Horwitt said the lack of change in the race was a “significant” development and a negative for the Biden campaign.
“[Biden’s] “The ratings were already low, and the end of the debate doesn't change the trajectory of the race,” Horwitt said. “That's the big story to emerge from the debate.”
A majority of Democrats (62%) want a different party leader
The poll was conducted from July 7 to 9 and included many prominent Democrats and Hollywood stars called on the president to drop out of the race, but many Democrats and the party's core supporters Standing behind Biden.
(The poll was also conducted before Biden's news conference on Thursday and his rally in Detroit on Friday.)
The survey found that only 33% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were happy with Biden as the party's presidential nominee, while 62% said they would have preferred another candidate.
In contrast, 71% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they were satisfied with Trump as the Republican nominee, while 27% said they preferred another candidate.
Additionally, 79% of all voters (61% of Democrats) said they were “very” or “moderately” concerned that Biden, 81, may not have the mental and physical health necessary to be president. That's up from 74% of voters who said so in a September 2023 News-News poll and 76% in January.
By comparison, 58% of voters said they were seriously or moderately concerned about Trump's 34 felony convictions in New York state, and 50% were concerned that the 78-year-old Trump is not mentally or physically fit to serve as president.
And polls have found that Biden has fallen behind Trump on key presidential qualities since the debate.
When asked which candidate is viewed as having the mental and physical health needed to be president, Trump held a 29-point lead over Biden, expanding from a 19-point lead Trump had on that question in an April NBC News poll.
Voters chose Trump as more competent and effective than Biden by a 49% to 31% margin — Trump had an 11-point lead on that score in an April poll (and Biden had a 9-point lead on the question in an NBC 2020 poll).
Meanwhile, Biden beat Trump by 16 points on whether he has the right temperament to be president, and by 15 points on whether he is honest and trustworthy (though in 2020, Biden far outperformed Trump on these qualities, especially temperament).
A stable Biden-Trump (and Harris-Trump) contest
Despite these changes since the debate, polls have shown a stable contest between Biden and Trump.
In the head-to-head race, Trump led Biden by 2 points among registered voters, 45% to 43%, within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
An April poll showed Trump with 46% and Biden with 44%.
A total of 12% of voters in the survey said they preferred another candidate, would not vote or were undecided between Biden and Trump – higher than any other NBC News poll this election cycle.
Democratic pollster Horwitt said it was notable that Trump's approval rating hadn't changed since the debate. “While all the attention right now is on Biden and how he's faring, Donald Trump is not doing too well in the race either,” he said.
In this matchup, Trump led among male voters (52% to 36%), white voters (52% to 38%) and white voters without college degrees (62% to 29%).
Biden led among black voters (69% to 12%), Latinos (54% to 38%), white people with college degrees (52% to 36%), women (50% to 39%) and independents (39% to 30%).
Among voters ages 18 to 34, the support for both candidates was roughly equal (43% for Trump, 41% for Biden).
In a hypothetical matchup between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden were no longer the Democratic front-runner, the former Republican president still led Harris by two points, 47% to 45%.
(See here for areas where Harris is stronger or weaker than Biden in certain demographics.)
In the third-party race, an NBC News poll showed Biden with 40% of registered voters, Trump with 37%, Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with 10%, Jill Stein with 3%, Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver with 2% and Cornel West with 3%. 1%.
Biden's 3-point lead in this multicandidate race differs from other polls that show third-party votes tilting the race toward Trump, and is essentially unchanged from his 2-point lead in April in the expanded vote.
And the race for Congress remains essentially the same, with 47% of voters wanting Democrats to control Congress and 46% wanting Republicans to control it (compared to 47% Republicans and 46% Democrats in April).
Biden's approval rating drops to 40%
According to the poll, Biden's job performance is rated at 40% approval and 58% disapproval, down slightly from 42% approval and 56% disapproval in April, but the move is within the margin of error.
Biden's 40% approval rating is lower than that of every other first-term president in the summer before his reelection in the history of NBC News polling, except for George H.W. Bush. At this point in 1992, his approval rating was 34% before his defeat.
Biden's approval rating was one percentage point lower than Trump's 41%. Approval rating A July 2020 NBC poll showed that, before Trump's failure, He is seeking re-election.
“Biden looks more like two incumbents who lost than an incumbent who won,” said McInturff, the Republican pollster.
An unpopular candidate, an unpopular party, and even an unpopular First Lady.
Even more striking in the poll was the unpopularity of every politician and political institution surveyed, from Biden and President Trump to the US Supreme Court and even the First Lady.
A recent NBC News poll found that the least popular person or group, in terms of combined positive and negative ratings, was the Democrat, with 31% of voters having a positive view of the party and 50% having an unfavorable view.
The Democrats' net approval rating (-19) tied the party's lowest approval rating in the history of NBC News polling. In April, the party's approval rating was 37% favorable and 47% unfavorable (-10).
This was followed by Harris (-18), Biden (-17), Trump (-15), the Republicans (-14), Kennedy (-12) and the U.S. Supreme Court (-12).
The poll also produced a net negative rating for First Lady Jill Biden, with 31% of voters giving her a positive rating and 41% (-10) giving her an unfavorable rating.
That's a sharp drop from the only other time the NBC News poll measured the first lady's approval rating, in January 2021, just before her husband was sworn in as president.
In the poll, 40% of people viewed her positively and 26% negatively (+14).
The NBC News poll was conducted July 7-9 among 800 registered voters, 660 of whom polled via mobile phone, and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
