Fox News Poll: Biden widens lead over Trump
Reaction and analysis from former Obama campaign spokesperson, Zach Friend, on ‘America’s Newsroom.’
It’s a headline that does no favors for President Trump
“Biden Takes Dominant Lead as Voters Reject Trump on Virus and Race,” read the New York Times headline on Wednesday touting its new national poll conducted by Siena College.
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With four and a half months to go until the November general election – which can be an eternity in campaign politics – the poll indicates that, right now, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads Trump 50-36 percent among registered voters nationwide.
The survey is the latest national poll to show the former vice president topping the GOP incumbent in the White House by double digits. A Fox News Poll released last week showed Biden ahead of the president by 12 percentage points and a CNN survey from earlier this month put the margin at 14 points.
Other surveys indicate a single-digit advantage for Biden. An average of the most recent national polls compiled by RealClearPolitics puts Biden ahead of the president by 10.2 points. But that’s double the roughly 5 point advantage the former vice president held over Trump in the average of national surveys in mid-May.
The president has railed against the polls – and his reelection campaign earlier this month slammed the CNN poll as “phony.”
“New York Times poll is based off of registered voters, not likely voters," Trump campaign deputy press secretary Ken Farnaso told Fox News in response to the Siena College poll. "And on top of that, our numbers have continuously shown President Trump running extremely strong against a defined Joe Biden. 2016 proved that the President’s ability to connect with the American people is unmatched.”
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But Biden’s lead is larger than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 6 to 7 point advantage at this point in the 2016 presidential election cycle, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
And while Trump was the outsider and disrupter in 2016, he’s now the incumbent president running on his record and how’s he’s handled the coronavirus pandemic, reigniting an economy flattened by the outbreak, and on the racial unrest that’s swept the nation in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police.
"The bottom line is Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. In 2016, the race was a lot about Hillary Clinton. Right now this race is about Donald Trump,” noted veteran GOP pollster Neil Newhouse. “If it remains a referendum on Donald Trump, we’re going to lose that.”
Clinton topped Trump in the vast majority of national polls in the summer and autumn of 2016. But the margins narrowed and the final national poll average heading into the November election put Clinton ahead of Trump by 2.1 points, which was the percentage she ended up winning the national popular vote.
But as any political science or American history student can tell you, the race for the White House is not a national popular vote, but rather a battle for the states and their electoral votes, and Trump smoked Clinton in the 2016 electoral vote count, thanks to narrow victories in key battleground states.
Right now Biden has a single-digit edge over Trump in 4 of the 5 most crucial swing states, according to averages of the latest public opinion polling in those states.
Newhouse – who was Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s pollster in the 2012 presidential campaign – acknowledged that national polls aren’t “necessarily indicative of how the race is going to end up.”
But he emphasized that “the national polls are still an indicator of where we are in some of these individual states. A rising tide lifts all boats. If we’re down 14 points nationally, we’re probably not right now within striking distance in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin or some of these other key states.”
Polls also indicate that Biden isn’t nearly as unpopular as Clinton was in 2016 – which is another problem for a president who’s favorable ratings and approval ratings are underwater.
Pointing to efforts already underway by the president, his campaign, and allied outside groups, Newhouse said the key for Trump is to try and turn the tables and make the general election more about the Democratic challenger.
“We’ve got to smoke Joe Biden out. Voters have got to understand more about his record and who he is,” Newhouse told Fox News. “We have to fill in the blanks on him.”
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