Polling begins to show Biden's weakness

Stephen Kruiser:

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If there was an overwhelming lesson to be learned from the 2016 presidential election it was that polls can’t be trusted. Right up until election day, all of the polls had Hillary Clinton practically slam-dunking her way to the White House.

It wasn’t the first time that polls had been wrong, it was just the worst time.

The polls regarding the presidential race today look much like they did at this juncture in 2016. According to them, Trump has no chance of winning. 

Sure, let’s go with that.

There is, however, one polling statistic that tends to be a real bellwether — favorability. 

Tyler wrote about this yesterday:

A new Civiqs/Daily Kos poll released on Wednesday found that 55 percent of Americans view Trump as “unfavorable,” while 43 percent view him as favorable, giving Trump a negative 12 percent approval rating.

In the same poll, however, 56 percent of Americans view Joe Biden unfavorably, while only 34 percent view him favorably, giving the Democrat a negative 22 percent approval rating.

This is astonishing, not just because Biden is more unpopular than Trump by about 10 percentage points, but because he is also far more unpopular than Hillary Clinton was at this point in 2016, according to the Huffington Post’s survey of polls.

In retrospect, we can see how telling Granny Maojacket’s favorability numbers were in 2016. 

As we survey this ever-shifting coronavirus landscape here in 2020, Trump supporters should be relieved about this Biden unfavorability news. When that is coupled with an overwhelming voter enthusiasm gap the prospects for the president’s reelection look far better than the rest of the polling would indicate. 

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There is another polling trend that needs to be added to this mix.  For example, when specific issues are polled people tend to overwhelmingly back the position taken by Trump and not Biden.  On immigration restrictions, Trump imposed while people are out of work because of the virus, 66 percent back the Trump position, and oppose the position of Biden which would allow immigration.

As the election gets closer, these issues will probably be more important to voters.  Also over time, it will be harder for the media to hide Biden's dementia and early onset of Alzheimer's.  Right now they are trying to avoid the obvious, but they can only do that for so long without further damaging their own credibility.

On the important issue of who can better bring the economy back:

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“According to the poll, 45% of Americans said Trump was better suited to create jobs, while 32% said Biden was the better candidate for that. That pushed Trump’s advantage over Biden in terms of job creation to 13 points, compared with the Republican president’s 6-point edge in a similar poll that ran in mid-April,” Reuters reported. ‘Thirty-seven percent said Trump was better leading the country’s coronavirus response, while 35% preferred Biden. A similar poll in mid-April showed Biden had a slight edge over Trump when it came to the nation’s response to the disease.”
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