If an election were held today, former US President Donald Trump would defeat President Joe Biden by a 10% margin of the popular vote, a Washington Post/ABC News poll has found. The result shows the strongest lead for Trump since both men declared their candidacy for the 2024 election.
Published on Saturday, the poll found that 52% of respondents would choose Trump and 42% would side with Biden, while the remainder are either undecided or would not vote. When the Post/ABC pollsters asked the same question in February, Trump led Biden by four points, at 48% to 44%.
The result is at odds with a slew of recent polls, all of which placed Trump and Biden in or near a statistical dead heat. An NBC News poll, also published on Saturday, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46%, while a Fox News survey last week placed Trump ahead of Biden at 48%-46%, and a Quinnipiac University poll put Biden in the lead by 47%-46%.
Before facing off against Biden for a second time, Trump will have to defeat an ever-expanding group of Republican challengers hoping to clinch the party’s nomination. However, every major poll shows the former president with a commanding lead over the pack, and Biden told donors on Wednesday that he thinks Trump “is destined to be the nominee again.”
According to the Post/ABC survey, Trump has an almost 40-point lead over his nearest Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, at 54% to 15 %. No other GOP challenger managed to break double digits in the survey.
Biden and Trump both face significant obstacles in their respective bids for the White House. Trump will enter election season next year fighting more than 90 felony charges in four separate cases, stemming from his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, mishandling of classified documents, and improper reporting of ‘hush-money’ payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump maintains that the indictments against him are politically-motivated, and that Biden’s Justice Department is engaged in a “Stalinist” attempt to take him out of the 2024 race.
For Biden, a key concern will be convincing voters that he is fit for office. According to the latest poll, three quarters of respondents, regardless of political persuasion, said that Biden is too old to serve a second term. Biden has long been attacked by Republicans for his apparent cognitive decline, but concerns over the president’s mental fitness have surfaced in most recent polls.
According to a a CBS News poll published last Sunday, 34% of US voters believe that the 80-year-old president would finish a second term in office, while the same number believe that Biden lacks the mental and cognitive health necessary for the job.