About 60% of voters described both Biden and Trump as “embarrassing.”
Pew Research Center conducted this survey to understand Americans' views of the 2024 presidential campaign. The analysis surveyed 9,424 adults, including 7,729 registered voters, from July 1 to 7, 2024. All participants in the survey are members of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP). The ATP is a group of people recruited from randomly selected addresses nationwide who agree to participate in surveys on a regular basis. This recruitment methodology ensures that nearly every U.S. adult has a chance of being selected. The survey was conducted online or by phone, and interviewed in person by an interviewer. The survey was weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, political party, education, and other factors. More information on the ATP methodology can be found here.
The questions, overview and methodology used in this report include:
Former President Donald Trump holds a four percentage point lead over Biden among registered voters after President Joe Biden's poor performance in the June 27 debate. If the election were held today, 44% say they would vote for Trump, 40% would vote for Biden and 15% would support third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Voter doubts about Biden's mental acuity are not new, but they have received intense attention since the debate.
Only a quarter of voters (24%) said the term “mentally astute” describes Biden very or quite well. More than twice as many voters (58%) said Trump is mentally astute..
The share of voters who rate Biden as mentally astute has fallen six points since January and is much lower than in 2020.
A new Pew Research Center survey of 9,424 adults, including 7,729 likely voters, conducted July 1-7, finds that both Biden and Trump are widely seen as flawed, though in different ways, and nearly seven in seven voters (68%) say they are dissatisfied with their choice as presidential candidate.
Key findings from the survey include:
A majority of voters describe Trump as “mean.” Trump trails Biden in honesty and closely behind in empathy, and voters are nearly twice as likely to describe Trump as mean (64%) as Biden (31%).
The majority of voters both Biden and Trump are “embarrassing” The percentage who said the same about each candidate was 63%. More than a third of each candidate's supporters — 37% of Biden supporters and 33% of Trump supporters — said their candidate was embarrassing. (Read more about the candidates' opinions in Chapter 2.)
2024 Presidential Election Status: Trump is leading Biden in the presidential election, 44% to 40%, but 17% say they support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (15%) or another candidate (2%).
When the choice is narrowed down to Biden and Trump, Trump has a slight edge, with 50% backing Trump and 47% backing Biden.
Year
Among voters over 50, Trump leads Biden 48% to 39%, with 11% backing Kennedy. Among voters 30-49, Trump's lead is more modest, with 42% backing Trump, 37% backing Biden and 19% backing Kennedy.
Biden has a big lead over Trump among voters under 30, 48% to 28%, with about one in five (22%) of the youngest voters saying they support Kennedy.
Race and Ethnicity
Trump has the lead among white voters (Biden 50% to Trump 36%), but Biden has a big lead among black voters (64% to 13%; Kennedy has 21% support).
Among Hispanic voters, Biden and Trump are tied (36% each), with 24% backing Kennedy. Biden has a big lead over Trump among Asian voters (47% to 29%), with 19% backing Kennedy.
Partisanship and the 2020 Vote
Both Biden and Trump enjoy the support of large majorities of their party's voters, but Trump is currently retaining more of his 2020 voters than Biden.
Nearly nine in ten (88%) of voters who supported Trump four years ago still support him today, compared to 79% of 2020 Biden voters who currently support Trump. Nearly seven in ten (14%) of Biden voters four years ago now support Kennedy, and 8% of 2020 Trump voters say they would vote for Kennedy. (Read more about voter preferences in Chapter 1.)
Related: Behind the Biden Victory: An Analysis of the 2020 Electoral College Based on Verified Voters.
Widespread dissatisfaction with the 2024 election campaign
Pew Research Center research over the past year has revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the state of American politics and the choice of presidential candidate, and a new survey shows voters giving a bleak assessment of the 2024 race.
- 87% said the campaign so far has not made them feel proud of their country.
- 76% say important policy debates are not being focused on
- 68% rate the campaign as too negative.
Majorities of voters in every demographic group express dissatisfaction with the presidential candidate, but Trump supporters are far more satisfied with their choice than supporters of Biden or Kennedy.
Nearly half of Trump supporters (51%) say they are very or fairly satisfied with their presidential candidacy, while roughly the same number (48%) say they are not very satisfied or not at all satisfied.
Roughly one in eight Biden supporters (81%) and an even larger majority of Kennedy supporters (90%) express dissatisfaction with their candidate.
A larger percentage of Biden supporters would swap both Biden and Trump on the ballot.
Since April, there has been a slight increase in the share of voters who say they would remove both Biden and Trump from the ballot if they had the chance: 53% now favor replacing Biden and Trump with another candidate, up from 49% in April.
This shift is happening entirely among Biden supporters. In fact, Trump supporters Unlikely There is now a stronger tendency to support switching between the two candidates than there was in April.
Currently, 71% of Biden supporters say that if they had the power to decide the major party nominee in the 2024 election, both Biden and Trump: About a quarter (23%) would keep Biden in office and replace Trump, while fewer would keep Trump in office and replace Biden (2%) or keep both candidates in office (3%).
In April, a majority of Biden supporters (62%) supported replacing both Biden and Trump.
In contrast, among Trump supporters, the share who would swap the two candidates fell from 35% to 26%, while the share who wanted to keep both candidates on the ballot rose from 27% to 39%.
Other findings: Voter interests, candidates and issues, Trump's behavior, Biden's personal traits changing, and job approval.
Kennedy supporters are far less interested in politics than Biden or Trump supporters. On several measures of electoral engagement (willingness to vote, belief that the stakes of the election are important, attention to the campaign) there are no meaningful differences between Biden supporters and Trump supporters.
But Kennedy supporters stand out with their low levels of engagement. For example, only 39% say it really matters who wins, about half the percentage of Biden supporters (79%) and Trump supporters (78%). And only 21% of Kennedy supporters say they are very motivated to vote, far less than Biden and Trump supporters (63%). (Read more about voter preferences in Chapter 1.)
Related: Third party and independent candidates often underperform in early polls.
Trump has big leads on immigration, the economy and foreign policy. Trump has double-digit leads over Biden on all three issues. His lead on immigration is 17 points. 52% of voters have a lot or some confidence in Trump, while 35% have confidence in Biden. Biden leads by 8 points (40% to 32%) on working with opposition officials and by 4 points (48% to 44%) on making good decisions on abortion policy. (Read more about voter preferences on issues in Chapter 2.)
Only 30% of Trump's supporters approve of his behavior. A majority of Trump supporters (55%) have mixed feelings about Trump's behavior, and 15% dislike the way he's behaved. Biden supporters express a much more positive opinion of their candidate's behavior. About one in six (59%) like the way Trump has behaved.
Biden's ratings for mental acuity have fallen, but his ratings for honesty have remained steady. Half as many voters now rate Biden as mentally astute (24%) than they did in the final month of the campaign in October 2020 (46%). Biden's mental astuteness has declined throughout his presidency: in April 2023, one-third of voters said Biden was mentally astute.
Trump's mental acuity is rated higher than it was in 2020 (58% now, 50% then). In contrast, Biden's honesty is rated at 48% now, exactly the same as it was in 2020. The percentage who rate Trump as honest has also remained almost constant (36% now, 36% then).
Public approval of Biden's job: About one-third of Americans (32%) approve of Biden's job performance. Ratings of his job performance have fluctuated slowly throughout the year; his current rating is three points lower than in April and about the same as in January (33%). Since April, Biden's job performance has fallen four points among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (65% to 61%). Only 5% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters approve, little change over the past year. (Read more about Biden's job performance ratings and Republican and Democratic views in Chapter 5.)
