We don’t yet know how the attempted assassination of Donald Trump will play out politically. My latest polling from the US and shows the state of the race at the point he rose to speak on Saturday. Crucially, I found that Americans had begun to see Joe Biden’s physical and mental capacity as a bigger factor in the presidential election than Trump’s character and judgment. Despite Biden’s narrow lead in terms of national vote share, my three surveys – conducted before and after Trump’s New York convictions, and again after the pair’s head-to-head CNN debate – found growing expectations of a Trump victory.
Fitness for office
Asked which they thought was the more important factor in the presidential election – Trump’s judgment and character or Biden’s physical and mental capacity – Americans chose Biden’s capacity by 46% to 43%. The proportion of 2020 Trump voters saying his character and judgment were the bigger factor (35%) was identical to the proportion of 2020 Biden voters who said the president’s physical and mental capacity mattered more.
Following his convictions for falsifying business records in New York on 30 May, we asked whether the verdicts made any difference to people’s likelihood of voting for him in the presidential election. Overall, Americans were more likely to say it made no difference (42%) than that it made them more (21%) or less (36%) likely to support him. However, only 8% of 2020 Trump voters said the convictions made them less inclined to vote for him again. Nearly half (48%) said the verdicts made them more likely to support him, while a further 44% said they made no difference.
Overall, the movement in recent weeks has been towards the view that the legal proceedings against Trump would help rather than hinder his chances of victory. Before Trump’s convictions in New York on 30 May, 25% of voters said they thought the legal proceedings against Trump would make him more likely to win the 2024 presidential election.
After the conviction, this rose to 29%. This number remained static after the Biden-Trump debate, with the proportion saying the convictions would make no difference rising to a high of 37% and the proportion thinking they would make Trump less likely to win falling to a low of 22%.
In our focus groups, a few said Trump’s conviction made it harder for them to consider voting for him in November. The fact of his being a felon, that he was convicted by a jury, the consequences for America’s reputation abroad and the unfairness of his running for president while other felons cannot vote were all mentioned. However, for most of those considering voting for Trump, his conviction made little or no difference. Having never seen Trump as a flawless individual, they continued to weigh his pros and cons against the pros and cons of a second Biden term, and still found Trump the lesser of two evils. “I’m not a fan of his behaviour and a lot of the terrible things he’s done,” a woman in Pennsylvania told us. “But from a business standpoint he does a fantastic job. He said things people didn’t want to hear but it was the truth and people had to hear it.”
The issues
We asked people which three issues they considered the three most important facing the United States, and then asked who they thought would do a better job on each of the issues they named – Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Trump led on 4 of the 5 top issues – the cost of living, the economy and jobs, immigration and border control, and crime – while Biden led on healthcare. The president was also well ahead on climate change and the environment, women’s rights, and social security.
We asked respondents whether they thought the US was doing too much, too little or about the right amount to support Ukraine and, separately, Israel. Overall, the numbers divided roughly equally in respect of the two countries: identical proportions (32%) said the US was doing too much in both cases, with around 3 in 10 saying they were doing the right amount to help and just under 1 in 5 saying the US was doing too little. However, this masks sharp differences in attitude towards the two conflicts between different types of voters.
2020 Trump voters were nearly two-and-a-half times as likely as 2020 Biden voters to say the US was doing too much to help Ukraine, while 2020 Biden voters were significantly more likely than 2020 Trump voters to say the US was doing too much to help Israel. 2020 Biden voters were nearly twice as likely to say the US was doing too much to help Israel as to say the same about Ukraine, while the reverse was true for 2020 Trump voters.
In our groups, participants from different political backgrounds worried about the cost to America in terms of finances, political focus being drawn away from domestic issues, and even potential future military involvement. As a man in Atlanta put it, “I get that these are our allies. But at what point are you supposed to worry about your home?”
The fundamentals
In our combined polls, voters said America was on the wrong track by 63% to 24% – though the gap had narrowed by 5 points since our previous poll in January. Those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 said “wrong track” by a 2-point margin down from 11 points at the beginning of the year.
Americans thought that over the next year the American economy would do badly rather than well for the country as a whole by 48% to 39% – though 2020 Biden voters were nearly twice as likely to be optimistic by (60%) as pessimistic (31%).
However, when it came to themselves and their families, people expected the economy to do well by 52% to 36%. 2020 Trump voters were the exception, narrowly saying they expected the economy to do badly for them by 47% to 43%.
In our polling before the debate on 17 June we found 41% saying they approved of Biden’s performance as president, with 54% disapproving. In our post-debate sample these numbers hardly shifted, to 42% approval and 55% disapproval. However, there was a slight shift within the negative column, to 41% saying they “strongly” disapproved, up 4 points since the debate.
For some in our groups, Biden’s achievements included student loan cancellations (though too limited for many – and some who had worked to pay theirs objected to the idea altogether), the infrastructure package, and action on prescription drug prices. The most frequent criticisms concerned border control, the cost of living, failure to improve the political atmosphere and a readiness to involve the US in foreign wars.
Approval ratings for Vice President Kamala Harris were no better than for President Biden, with 40% having a positive view of her performance and 50% a negative one in our combined polls.
Americans as a whole said they felt worse off than they were 4 years ago by a 20-point margin, with 3 in 10 saying they felt about the same. Only 1 in 3 of those who voted for Biden in 2020 said they felt better off since then; similar proportions felt worse off (31%) or about the same (36%). Six in ten 2020 Trump voters said they felt worse off than they were 4 years ago.
The election choice
In our 10,000-sample pre-conviction poll, we found Biden 4 points ahead of Trump among registered voters, with Kennedy third on 10%. In our 5,000-sample survey taken in the days after the conviction, this lead narrowed to 1 point, with Biden ahead by 42% to 41% and the main third-party candidates unchanged. In our third survey, taken after the 27 June TV debate, Biden led by 2 points among registered voters.
In other words, Trump’s position has if anything strengthened after his New York convictions on 30 May, but neither of these major events – the convictions or the Biden-Trump debate – produced changes in overall voting intention outside the margin of error.
Across the three surveys, we found Trump ahead among white and Hispanic registered voters (by 7 and 1 point respectively), and behind by 34 points among African Americans (54% to 20%). Trump led by 5 points among men and Biden by 4 points among women. Trump led in every age group up to 44.
In our post-debate poll, around 8 in 10 voters said they had definitely decided how to vote, with just under 1 in 5 saying they may well change their mind before the election. Likely Trump and Biden supporters were almost equally likely to say they had finally decided; 15% of each said they may yet change their minds. Women (20%), 18 to 24 year-olds (33%), 25 to 34s (22%) and independents (31%) were the most likely to say they may change their minds before November.
In our three rounds of polling combined, nearly 8 in 10 of likely Trump voters said they were voting mostly for their candidate. Fewer than two thirds (64%) of likely Biden voters said the same, with 32% saying they were voting mostly against another candidate.
Expectations of a Trump victory strengthened over our three waves of polling. Before the convictions 41% expected Trump to win and 37% Biden. This 4-point margin widened to 5 points in our post-conviction poll, and to 14 points in our post-debate poll, in which 47% expected a Trump victory and 33% a Biden win.
Over the three surveys Republicans became slightly more optimistic (from 84% before the convictions to 87% after the debates), while Democrats became markedly less confident – from 74% before the convictions to 67% after the debates.
