Just over a month ago, the New York Times and its polling partner Siena College released a national survey that fueled a round of high-decibel agita among Democrats and their media allies. In a not-at-all-hypothetical rematch of the last presidential election, Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump led incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden by five percentage points, 48 percent to 43 percent. That was in early March. We now have a fresh Times/Siena nationwide poll to chew over, and its results are marginally different from the last batch of data the outfit released. With a likely voters screen in place, Trump leads by a single point in both the head-to-head match-up, as well as within a field also featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:
🇺🇲 NATIONAL POLL: NYT/Siena (LV)
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 14, 2024
🟥 Trump 47% [-1]
🟦 Biden 46% [+2]
[+/- change vs Feb.]
——
🟥 Trump 43%
🟦 Biden 42%
🟨 RFK Jr 2%
—
Favs
Trump 44-55 (-11)
Biden 42-55 (-13)
—
• 538: #1 (3.0/3.0) | April 7-11
• D34/R28/I31 | 1,059 LV | ±3.5%https://t.co/54K15WeTqH pic.twitter.com/wyvZEMoN1H
These respondents rank Trump slightly more positively on overall favorability than Biden, a notable reversal of a 2020 Biden advantage -- though both men remain underwater on this metric by double digits. A big reason Biden has mostly closed the gap from the previous survey in the series is that Biden is improving his consolidation among blue-tinted voters:
Mr. Biden’s tick upward appears to stem largely from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters — he is winning a greater share of voters who supported him in 2020 than he did a month ago. Then, Mr. Trump had secured the support of far more of his past voters compared with the president — 97 percent to 83 percent — but that margin has narrowed. Mr. Biden is now winning 89 percent of his 2020 supporters compared with 94 percent for Mr. Trump. The tightening poll results are the latest evidence of a 2024 contest that both campaigns are preparing to be excruciatingly close. The last two presidential elections were decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, and this one could be just as tight. In a nation so evenly divided, even the tiniest of shifts in support could prove decisive.
The country's mood is not great, and the electorate is not thrilled with its choices, according to the data, described this way by the Times: "The share of voters who view the nation as headed in the wrong direction remains a high 64 percent. Almost 80 percent of voters still rate the nation’s economic conditions as fair or poor, including a majority of Democrats. And both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump remain unpopular, for familiar reasons. Most voters think Mr. Biden is too old. A majority believe Mr. Trump has committed serious federal crimes." The polling results show Biden ticking up slightly among non-white voters, though still under-performing. And nearly 70 percent of respondents overall view Biden as "too old to be an effective president," an ongoing vulnerability. On the top two issues on voters' minds right now -- the economy and immigration -- Trump commands sizable advantages on both:
Voters in the poll gave Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy almost perfectly inverted ratings: 64 percent approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the issue as president and 63 percent disapprove of Mr. Biden’s job on the issue now. Immigration gave Mr. Trump his other biggest edge among a host of issues voters were asked about in the survey. Border crossings hit record highs at the end of last year. A slim majority approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of immigration as president, while 64 percent of voters disapproved of Mr. Biden’s job on those [immigration-related] matters.
Biden's approval rating on the economy is (-24), while it's a whopping (+26) for Trump. On immigration, Biden is underwater by 32 percentage points, whereas Trump is (+5) on the issue. Trump also out-performs Biden on handling foreign conflicts by 30 points, maintaining law and order by 18 points, and handling the Supreme Court by 13 points. Biden leads narrowly on race relations, and is ahead comfortably on both COVID-19, as well as unifying the country. America is certainly not feeling terribly unified right now. In fact, our politics are remarkably polarized:
Tom Bevan: Razor-Thin Pew Party Affiliation Data Shows Fragility of Both Party Coalitions
— RealClearPolitics (@RCPolitics) April 12, 2024
Listen & Subscribe:https://t.co/Lb025R9AOa@siriusxmpotus @TomBevanRCP @CarlCannon #podcast #politics #Election2024 #vote pic.twitter.com/f3D7p3XS58
I'll note again, because it strikes me as extremely important, that Biden seems to have an edge with voters who are virtually certain to vote. Occasional and unreliable voters, however, appear to be leaning Trump's way -- by a double-digit margin, in fact, according to another recent national poll. Trump's lead is even bigger, though, among eligible but un-registered voters, which is why a Democrat-aligned data guru recently urged the party not to engage in its typical mass registration drives, as bringing new voters into the fold could well benefit Trump this year. Attention: Republicans. Finally, as Trump's first criminal trial process is set to kick off in Manhattan this week (we weighed in on that indictment here), I'll just point out that the betting odds have tipped back toward the incumbent, for what it's worth (mostly worthless, in my view):
Notable: Biden has retaken the lead in the RCP Betting Odds Average. https://t.co/oCbG9wcrYF pic.twitter.com/13LPVubW95
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) April 14, 2024
Trump remains narrowly ahead in RCP's national polling average, but we all know that the real action is in a handful of battleground states.
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