Biden shrinks Trump’s edge in latest Times/Siena poll

President Joe Biden has nearly erased Donald Trump’s early polling advantage, amid signs that the Democratic base has begun to coalesce behind the president despite lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy and his age, according to a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College.

Biden and Trump are now virtually tied, with Trump holding a 46% to 45% edge. That is an improvement for Biden from late February, when Trump had a sturdier 48% to 43% lead just before he became the presumptive Republican nominee.

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, Trump had secured the support of far more of his past voters compared with Biden — 97% to 83% — but that margin has narrowed. Biden is now winning 89% of his 2020 supporters compared with 94% for Trump.

The tightening poll results are the latest evidence of a 2024 contest that both campaigns are preparing to be excruciatingly close. The past 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.

Beneath the narrowing contest, many of the fundamentals of the race appear largely unchanged.

The share of voters who view the nation as headed in the wrong direction remains a high 64%. Almost 80% of voters still rate the nation’s economic conditions as fair or poor, including a majority of Democrats. And both Biden and Trump remain unpopular, for familiar reasons. Most voters think Biden is too old. A majority believe Trump has committed serious federal crimes.

“Just blah,” said Beth Prevost, a 59-year-old hairdresser and independent voter in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, summing up the feelings of so many about the rematch. She said she was leaning toward Biden as “the lesser of the two evils.”

“You can recover from bad policies, but you can’t recover from a bad heart,” Prevost said. “And Donald Trump has a bad heart.”

The survey comes just before Trump’s history-making criminal trial in New York City, the first for a former U.S. president. He faces charges related to falsifying records related to a hush-money payment to a porn actor. The case is one of four involving felony indictments against Trump, but it is the only one so far with a trial set to begin before the election.

Yet, despite the potential for the Republican nominee to face jail time, only 1 in 4 voters said they were paying very close attention to Trump’s legal travails.

The Biden campaign, which has already begun advertising in battleground states, has hoped the reality of a potential second Trump term will snap reluctant Democrats back toward their typical partisan posture. There is some initial evidence of that happening.

In the past month, Biden’s support among white voters remained flat, but it has inched upward among Black and Latino voters, even if it still lags behind traditional levels of Democratic support. Biden was faring better than he had been a month ago in suburbs and among women, although he was weaker among men. Younger voters remain a persistent weakness, while older voters provide a source of relative strength for the Democratic president.

The poll’s overall margin of error was 3.3%. But the results among subgroups are less statistically reliable because there are fewer respondents in them. Still, this poll showed Biden with his strongest performance among nonwhite voters among the past three Times/Siena surveys since December.

Age, however, remains a political albatross for Biden.

Sixty-nine percent of voters still see the 81-year-old Democrat as too old to be an effective president. Trump, who turns 78 in June, would also be the oldest president in American history if elected. But voters do not have the same doubts about his capacity to serve, with only 41% viewing him as too old.

There was one notable shift in the past month. Among voters who are older than 65, the share who view Biden as too old has dropped significantly.

Russell Wood, 67, a Democratic retiree and a veteran who lives in Los Angeles County, said he had noticed a marked change in Biden’s energy levels. He was disappointed Biden had skipped the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview but was pleased with the performance he had seen since.

“He did a really great job at the State of the Union, and since then, it’s like he’s been a different Joe Biden,” Wood said, adding: “I know he’s on the campaign trail day in and day out. I have no complaints there.”

The economy also continues to be a drag for Biden, who has tried to frame his “bottom up and middle out” job agenda under the banner of “Bidenomics.” Young voters are especially sour, with more than 85% rating the economy poor or fair.

Voters in the poll gave Trump’s and Biden’s handling of the economy almost perfectly inverted ratings: 64% approved of Trump’s handling of the issue as president and 63% disapprove of Biden’s job on the issue now.

Immigration gave 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 Trump’s handling of immigration as president, while 64% of voters disapproved of Biden’s job on those matters.

Luis Campino, a 50-year-old independent voter who emigrated from Colombia and now lives in Highland, New York, said there were “dangerous” people crossing the border. “They’re coming in like nothing,” he added.

Campino said he had voted for Biden in 2020 but was planning to vote for Trump as the “lesser of the evils,” a decision driven in part by his concerns about crime and immigration.

In the poll, Biden was given better ratings than Trump on his ability to unite the nation and his handling of both race relations and the pandemic.

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But with the war in Ukraine dragging into its third year after Russia’s invasion and the civilian death toll rising in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s assault after the Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas, voters gave Trump significantly higher marks on his handling of foreign conflicts.

Only 36% approve of Biden’s managing of those conflicts, with especially glaring weaknesses among younger voters. Only 4% of voters younger than 45 strongly approve of his job on such international matters.

Danny Ghoghas, 23, a bartender and server who lives in Burbank, California, is strongly considering staying home on Election Day to protest Biden’s response to the conflict in Gaza.

“I really don’t like Donald Trump and would not like him to be in office again,” said Ghoghas, a Democrat. “That’s why I would vote for Biden again. But other than that, I can’t really think of a good reason to vote for him.”

The generational differences on foreign affairs were notable. Although voters of all ages viewed Trump similarly, Biden received far worse ratings from voters younger than 45, 70% of whom disapproved. Among those who are 45 and older, a slimmer 53% majority disapproved.

Biden has made Trump’s potential to undermine democratic rule after the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. But so far, equal 31% segments of respondents said Biden and Trump were “good for democracy.” The number who said Trump was “bad for democracy” (45%) only slightly outpaced those who said the same of Biden.

Also in the poll, nearly equal shares of voters labeled Trump and Biden a “risky choice” for the country.