The rapid erosion of support for President Joe Biden has generated a sense of dread within the White House, given that the 2024 presidential election is just one year away.
According to polls released by Siena College and The New York Times over the weekend, Biden trailed former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, but won Wisconsin.
In 2020, the president carried each of the six battleground states.
Poll results show Biden has a “growing race problem,” according to Axios, which said fading support among black and Hispanic voters is “an alarming, re-election-threatening, full-blown crisis for the White House.”
According to a Times survey, Biden’s support among nonwhite voters has decreased by 33 percentage points since 2020, according to Axios.
In contrast, a combined 22 percent of black voters, who have historically exhibited allegiance to the Democratic Party, expressed support for Trump. The Times described it as “a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.”
In a political climate where Hispanics frequently grant Democrats a 30-point advantage over their opponents, Biden’s lead among Hispanics has shrunk to single digits in each of the six swing states, according to Axios.
The outlet hypothesized that fiscal concerns are motivating the electorate, citing Biden’s rejection of fossil fuels, which has a negative impact on employment and finances, and the exorbitant prices of automobiles and housing, which are unaffordable for many black voters, as examples.
Despite the notorious imprecision of polls conducted a year prior to an election in predicting voter sentiment months later, Axios noted that the costly legislation enacted by the Democrats during their control of Congress has failed to persuade voters, leaving the party “perplexed” as to what will effectively appeal to them.
The Times summed up its polling this way: “Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying.”
“In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six,” the Times said.
It was stated that voters desire competence, with Trump receiving a 17-point advantage over Biden when asked whether he had benefited or harmed respondents, whereas Biden had an 18-point deficit in response to the same question.
“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, 53, of Pennsylvania, who was a Biden supporter in 2020.
“I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him,” Weiss said.
By phone, The Times contacted 3,662 registered electors between October 22 and Friday. For all registered electors, the margin of error of the poll is 1.8 percentage points; at the state level, that figure increases to between 4.4 and 4.8 percentage points.
Similar patterns were observed in a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, which found that a mere 23 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the nation’s progress.
According to the survey, Biden was viewed favorably by 33% of Hispanic respondents and 49% of black respondents. According to exit polls conducted by ABC in 2020, 67 percent of Hispanic voters and 87 percent of black voters supported Biden at that time.
The trend continued in a CBS/YouGov poll which found that 45% of Hispanic voters believed a re-election to Biden would be detrimental to their lives.