President Joe Biden was behind the former president donald trump — albeit within the margin of error — in many national and battleground polls before the Biden debate debacle.
Now Biden is 1 to 2 points behind in some polls, but the movement is still within the margin of error, and few results reflect a radically changed race — although in our polarized and sharply divided politics, the campaign could very well depend on such margins. .
That’s the conclusion of polls 11 days after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, when a handful of Democrats called on him to drop out of the race and a defiant Biden insists he will remain on the campaign trail. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said “Morning Joe” from MSNBC.
And that minimal change in the electoral mirrors What the research found after Trump’s criminal conviction in late May — a slight move of the sort that could matter a lot in a heated presidential campaign, but nothing that suggests a fundamental shift in race compared with what came before.
See national surveys. Before the debate, Trump led Biden by 1 point among likely voters in the CBS News/YouGov poll. Now your leadership is 2 points — within the margin of error.
In CNN’s national poll before the debate in April, Trump rose 6 points. After the debate? Was a identical 6 points.
The biggest movement came from New York Times/Siena College national poll, but even that move didn’t suggest a radical change in the race over two weeks. Before the debate, according to this poll, Trump was leading Biden by 6 points among registered voters and 4 points among likely voters.
After the debate, Trump’s lead was 8 points among registered voters and 6 points among likely voters. This is a two-point shift in Trump’s direction.
Battlefield surveys also show stability
Then there is voting in the swing state. Bloomberg News/Morning Consult Surveys released over the weekend found a largely stable race, with Trump slightly ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and with Biden ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin. All results were within the margin of error except Trump’s 7-point lead in Pennsylvania.
(That said, it’s hard to reconcile Biden’s 7-point drop in Pennsylvania but 5-point lead in the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll.)
The exception to the stable vote was a Research from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, which found Trump slightly ahead, although well within the margin of error, in a field of multiple candidates. Remember, Democrats have won New Hampshire in every presidential election since 2000.
Although the main results do not paint a picture of a fundamentally altered race, what he has changed quickly in the polls as the debate is perceptions about Biden’s health.
The CBS/YouGov poll finds that the share of voters who believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to be president fell from 35% in June to 27% after the debate – a bigger change than the CBS poll found in the horse race .
Important Questions to Ask
National Democrats are panicking after Biden’s debate performance and its fallout — for good reason.
But the polls raise important questions: Why didn’t they panic before the debate, when the numbers already showed that Biden faced a difficult path to re-election? Are national Democrats and progressive media voices simply catching up with where many voters previously were regarding their age and health?
Most voters are stuck with their perceptions of both Biden and Trump, which explains why seismic events — like Trump’s conviction or Biden’s debate performance — barely changed the poll numbers?
And is it possible that another seismic event could shift the race a few points in the other direction for voters who aren’t in lockdown?
After all, at least four events so far slightly moved numbers in this stable race over the past year — the Israel-Hamas war, the aftermath of Biden’s State of the Union address, Trump’s conviction and the June 27 debate.
Will there be another one? You can probably count on that.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
