Biden Narrows Trump’s Edge in Latest Times/Siena Poll

President Biden has all but erased Donald J. Trump’s early voting advantage, amid signs that the Democratic base has begun to unite 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.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are currently almost tied, with Mr. Trump holding an advantage of 46% to 45%. That is an improvement for Mr. Biden compared to the end of February, when Mr. Trump had a stronger position 48 percent to 43 percent lead right before he became the presumptive Republican nominee.

Mr Biden’s rise appears to stem largely from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters – he is winning a larger share of voters in 2020 than in a last month. After that, Mr. Trump had the support of far more former voters than the president — 97% to 83% — but that margin has narrowed. Mr. Biden is currently winning 89% of 2020 supporters compared to 94% for Mr. Trump.

The tight poll result is the latest evidence in the 2024 contest that both campaigns are closing in on a spectacularly close call. The last two presidential elections were decided by tens of thousands of votes in several battleground states, and this one could be just as tight. In an evenly divided nation, even the smallest shifts in support can be decisive.

Beneath the ever-shrinking competition, many of the fundamentals of racing have remained largely unchanged.

The percentage of voters who see the country as moving in the wrong direction remains high at 64%. Nearly 80% of voters still rate the country’s economic conditions as fair or poor, including a majority of Democrats. And both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are unpopular for familiar reasons. The majority of voters think that Mr. Biden is too old. The majority believe that Mr. Trump committed a serious federal crime.

“It’s just blah,” said Beth Prevost, a 59-year-old hairdresser and independent voter in Windsor Locks, Conn., summing up the feelings of many about the rematch. She said she leaned toward Mr. Biden as “the lesser of two evils.”

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

The survey took place just before Mr. Trump’s history-making criminal trial in New York City, the first for a former US president. He faces charges related to falsifying records related to a hush money payment to a porn star. The case is one of four involving felony indictments against Mr. Trump, but it is the only one so far whose trial began before the election.

However, despite the possibility of the Republican candidate facing jail time, only a quarter of voters said they were still not paying close attention to the former president’s legal troubles.

Biden’s campaign, which has begun advertising in battleground states, had hoped the reality of Trump’s potential second term would cause reluctant Democrats to return to the party’s stance. their typical sect. There is some early evidence of that happening.

Over the last month, Mr. Biden’s support among white voters has remained flat, but it has increased among Black and Latino voters, even as it still lags behind his traditional levels of support. Democratic Party. Mr. Biden performed better than a month ago in the suburbs and among women, although he was weaker among men. Young 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 results among subgroups are less statistically reliable because there are fewer respondents in them. Still, this poll shows Biden performing best among non-white voters among the three most recent Times/Siena surveys since December.

However, age is still a political obstacle for Mr. Biden.

Fully 69% of voters still consider the 81-year-old Democrat too old to be an effective president. Mr. Trump, who will turn 78 next June, will also be the oldest president in American history if elected. But voters do not have similar doubts about his ability to serve, with only 41% saying he is too old.

There was a notable change last month. Among voters over 65 years old, the proportion saying Mr. Biden is too old has decreased significantly.

Russell Wood, 67, a retired Democrat and veteran who lives in Los Angeles County, said he noticed a marked change in Mr. Biden’s energy level. He was disappointed that Mr. Biden skipped the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview but was pleased with the performance he has seen since then.

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

The economy also continues to be a drag on the president, who has tried to build his “bottom-up and middle-of-the-road” work agenda under the banner of “Bidenomics.” Young voters are especially sour, with more than 85% rating the economy as poor or fair.

Voters in the poll said that the way Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden handled the economy was almost completely reversed: 64% approved of the way Mr. Trump handled the issue as president and 63% disapproved. How Mr. Biden is handling this issue today.

Immigration gave Mr. Trump his other biggest advantage among a range of issues on which voters were asked in the survey. Border line reached a record high at the end of last year. A slim majority approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of immigration issues as president, while 64% of voters disapprove of Mr. Biden’s performance on those issues.

Luis Campino, a 50-year-old independent who immigrated from Colombia and now lives in Highland, NY, said there are “dangerous” people crossing the border. “They are coming like it was nothing,” he added.

Mr. Campino said he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but planned to vote for Mr. Trump as “the lesser of evils,” a decision partly due to his concerns about crime and immigration .

In the poll, Mr. Biden was rated higher than Mr. Trump in terms of his ability to unite the country as well as his handling of both race relations and the pandemic.

But as the war in Ukraine entered its second year after Russia’s invasion and the number of civilian deaths in Gaza increased following Israel’s attack following the Hamas terror attack, voters gave Mr. Trump points significantly higher in his handling of foreign conflicts.

Only 36% approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of those conflicts, especially the obvious weaknesses among younger voters. Only 4% of voters under 45 strongly approve of his work on such international issues.

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

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

The generational differences in foreign affairs are notable. While voters of all ages rated Mr. Trump similarly, Mr. Biden received much poorer ratings from voters under 45, 70% of whom disapproved. Among those aged 45 and over, a slim majority, 53% disagreed.

Mr. Biden has made Mr. Trump’s ability to undermine democracy after the January 6, 2021 riots a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. But so far, 31% of respondents say Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are “good for democracy.” The number of people who think Mr. Trump is “not good for democracy” is 45%, only slightly higher than the number of people who say the same about Mr. Biden.

Also in the poll, an almost equal percentage of voters considered Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden to be “risky choices” for the country.

The survey did not ask about potential third-party candidates. But about 5% of voters who appeared dissatisfied with the Trump-Biden choice volunteered the names of other candidates for whom they planned to vote, including Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to independents, who are fighting to win votes nationwide.

It remains unclear what effect the upcoming criminal trial will have on Mr. Trump, with 37% saying they pay little or no attention.

However, a majority of 58% of voters considered allegations that he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels to be very or somewhat serious. Opinions were predictably divided along partisan lines, although a majority of independents in particular considered the allegations at least as serious.

More interesting is the gender gap in that question.

Women are twice as likely as men, 40% to 20%, to view allegations involving porn stars as very serious; Men are twice as likely as women to view these allegations as not serious, between 30% and 15%.

Ruth Igielnik, Alyce McFadden And Camille Baker Report contributions.

Here are important things to know about how the Times/Siena poll was conducted:

• We spoke to 1,059 registered voters between April 7 and 11, 2024.

• Our surveys are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. More than 95 percent of respondents were contacted by cell phone for this poll.

• Voters were selected for the survey from the registered voters list. This list contains information about the demographic characteristics of each registered voter, allowing us to ensure we reach the right number of voters for each party, race and region. For this poll, we made nearly 127,000 calls to more than 93,000 voters.

• To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to participate in the poll, we placed greater emphasis on respondents from underrepresented demographic groups. represented among survey respondents, such as those without a college degree. You can see more information about respondent characteristics and the weighted sample above methods pagein the “Sample components” section.

• The poll’s margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. In theory, this means the results will always reflect the views of the entire population, although there are many other challenges that create additional sources of error. When calculating the difference between two values ​​- such as a candidate’s lead in a race – the margin of error is twice as large.

You can see Full results and detailed methods here. If you want to read more about how and why we conduct polls, you can See answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own here.