A poll of 1,006 people conducted for ABC News by Langer Research Associates shows Trump beating Biden 51-42 in a national contest. The full description of the poll data with charts is available here. Per the poll methodology, 25% of respondents indicated they were Democrats, 25% Republicans, and 42% said independent.
If you read through the data there’s a lot to digest, as the poll asked respondents questions about the economy, the candidates’ age, immigration and other issues. Polls taken this far away from an election don’t necessarily mean much, but in my opinion the two key takeaways at present are:
1. Many Americans, perhaps a majority, don’t really care about the fact Trump is being criminally charged. For example, Trump’s approval rating from racial and ethnic minorities actually improved since he’s been indicted (32% to 43%). I personally doubt these folks will change their minds if he’s convicted.
2. As usual, the economy remains the main driver of voter sentiment, overcoming pro-Biden differences on issues like abortion. The biggest difference I saw in the poll:
“The relationship between candidate preference and economic sentiment is strong. Among the 44 percent of Americans who say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, Trump has an 84-12 percent advantage. Among those who are in the same shape financially – not worse, but also not better off – it flips to 66-25 percent, Biden Trump, and is similar among the comparatively few who are better off.”
In retrospect, it may turn out that Democrats made a mistake by supporting pandemic-era payment programs that put more money into people’s pockets than they had even before the pandemic (e.g., unemployment payments of $600 per week to people who were earning less than $600 per week, multiple stimulus payments, etc.). A couple of years later, people are looking back and associating those extra payments with Trump even though the Democrats were the ones pushing the need to get more money into people’s pockets at that time. Likewise, it appears that people are associating Biden more with the inflation that resulted, simply because of timing.
Hopefully the sentiments expressed in this poll change and become more beneficial for Democrats as the election grows closer. And the big missing piece from this poll is a state-by-state breakdown of the results that could be used to analyze them from the Electoral College perspective, since Trump voters in California and Biden voters in Tennessee are unlikely to count in electing the next president.