Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the 11th Democratic candidates debate of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, held in CNN's Washington studios without an audience because of the global coronavirus pandemic, in Washington, U.S., March 15, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:59 am
Joe Biden leads Donald Trump 49%-40% as Trump’s coronavirus approval bump looks to be a polling mirage that wasn’t driven by Trump’s approval.
In a head-to-head presidential matchup, Biden is up by 49-40 percent over Trump, a lead that is outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Another 11 percent would vote for someone else or are undecided. Last month, Biden was ahead by 49-41 percent.
The race remains a nine-point advantage for Biden over Trump when looking only at those voters extremely interested in the election (52-43 percent) and the former vice president has an eight-point edge in battleground states (48-40 percent).
However, Biden’s advantage grows to 25 points, 57-32 percent, in close counties (where Hillary Clinton and Trump were within 10 points in 2016).
The coronavirus epidemic has rightly taken center stage and frozen the presidential campaign in place where it was a month ago. Trump has been touting a polling bump that was not reflective of the state of the 2020 election.
In a crisis as fast-moving as the coronavirus, polling will not keep up with recent developments. The polls showing a Trump bump were conducted before the beginning of the current week when the crisis worsened.
Joe Biden isn’t going to win or lose the election in the next month, but Donald Trump might if he hasn’t already.
The coronavirus bump in Trump’s polling was noise. It was a reflection of people wanting the country to do well, not approval of Trump’s job performance. Even during the coronavirus epidemic, Trump’s job approval has still not hit 51%, and it is likely to plummet as the epidemic takes its toll on the United States.
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