Donald J. Trump’s lead in the 2024 presidential race has widened after President Biden’s poor performance in last week’s debate, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll, as concerns that Biden is too old to govern effectively are at an all-time high among Democrats and independents.
Trump currently leads Biden among likely voters nationwide, 49 percent to 43 percent, giving him a 3-point lead over the Republican just a week before the debate, the largest lead Trump has recorded in the Times/Siena poll since 2015. Trump also has an even bigger lead among registered voters, 49 percent to 41 percent.
Doubts about Biden’s age and acumen are widespread and growing: Polls show majorities of every demographic, geographic and ideological group, including black voters and those who say they would still vote for Biden, believe that at 81, Biden is too old to be effective.
[The poll does not show a fundamental change in the race, but it adds to longstanding concerns, Nate Cohn writes.]
Overall, 74% of voters say Biden is too old for the presidency, up 5 points since the debate. Concerns about Biden’s age rose 8 points among Democrats in the week after the debate, to 59%. The share of independents who say they feel that way rose to 79%, roughly in line with Republicans’ views of the president.
The poll offers early empirical evidence of what many Democrats have feared: Biden’s lackluster debate performance further jeopardizes his chances against Trump this fall. Some Democratic lawmakers and donors have raised questions about Biden’s health after he struggled to finish thoughts or clearly articulate his vision during the debates, and they are calling on a skeptical public to prove he’s fit to serve as president until he’s 86.
There were some slight positives for Biden in the polls.
First, Biden narrowed Trump’s support among independents, but that gap was more than offset by Biden’s decline among Democrats and Trump’s rise among Republicans. Second, the share of Democrats who think Biden should no longer be the nominee rose slightly, but the increase was much smaller than growing Democratic concern about Biden’s age. The first calls from members of Congress for Biden to resign came on Tuesday.
Overall, more voters said they thought Biden should remain the Democratic nominee, either because they were encouraged after the debate or because more Republicans now want him as a challenger.
“If this was a boxing match, it would have been a TKO in the first round. Somebody stop this,” said George Lee, a 44-year-old health care adviser from Brooklyn, as he watched Biden take one rhetorical punch after another during the debate. “He’s lost his mind. That was evident in last week’s fight. They’ve been saying that for a long time, but the world saw it.”
Lee, a Democrat, said he hopes Biden steps down but will still vote to stop Trump. “There’s no way Biden can win now,” he worried.
The poll also revealed deep concerns about Biden’s fitness to run: Not only do half of voters think Biden is too old to be effective, but 50%, including 55% of independents, agree that “his age is an issue that makes him incompetent to carry out the duties of the presidency.”
Voters also have some concerns about Trump’s age, but not as much as they do about Biden’s.
After the debate, 42% of voters thought Trump was too old to serve as president, up three points from a week ago, when Democrats strongly supported him. Just 19% said Trump was too old to do his job.
One of the most interesting findings from the poll is that almost all of Trump’s post-debate increase in approval ratings came from men.
Trump has made appeals to masculinity a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, including his first public appearance since his felony conviction for paying hush money to porn stars and attending UFC fights.
Pre-debate polls gave Trump a 12 percentage point lead among male voters. After the debate, his lead among men grew to 23 points, especially among younger men and those without college degrees.
Biden’s five-point lead among female voters before the debate actually increased slightly to eight points.
Those who watched the CNN debate in Atlanta said Trump beat Biden 60 percent to 22 percent.
Only 16% of voters said Biden’s campaign went well, and just 3% said it went very well. In an era of bitter partisanship, even Democrats felt Biden had failed.
About a third of Democrats said Biden performed well, while 89% of Republicans said the same about Trump.
More than 50 million Americans watched the debate live, and 59% of voters said they tuned in. Only 10% said they had never heard of the debate, 15% said they had heard of it, and 16% said they watched the video after the debate.
It was this final group – video viewers – who offered the most astute comments on Biden’s age issue, perhaps because some of his most incoherent answers went viral.
About 80% of people who saw the clips or heard about the debate but didn’t watch it live thought Biden was too old, compared with the low 70% range for voters who watched the debate live or didn’t watch it at all.
The pre-debate Times/Siena poll looked more favorable to Trump than national polls at the time. One explanation was that Republicans responded better to the poll’s invitation than Democrats, a sign of enthusiasm after Trump’s conviction. Higher response rates among certain groups don’t necessarily indicate inaccurate results. But even so, the new poll brought response rates for both parties back to their usual comparable levels.
In an internal memo to staff on Wednesday, the Biden campaign told aides to be on the lookout for possible negative results, particularly from the Times-Siena polls.
“Polls are a time series and should be expected to continue to fluctuate,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote. They said their internal metrics were within the margin of error. The campaign had previously said post-debate polls showed Biden trailing Trump, but said the lead had not changed since before the debate.
In the Times/Siena poll, which asked voters about the likelihood of third-party or independent candidates, Trump’s lead widened by 2 percentage points last week. After the debate, which included six candidates in the survey, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had 8 percent support, Trump was leading Biden 42 percent to 37 percent. Before the debate, Trump led 40 percent to 37 percent.
The 2024 presidential election pits two historically unpopular candidates against each other, but after the debate both candidates’ unpopularity ratings increased slightly: Biden’s unpopularity rating rose to 61 percent, while Trump’s unpopularity rating rose to 55 percent.
The Biden campaign had hoped that the debate would bring back some Democratic voters who were reluctant to back Biden for the 2024 presidential election by showing them a side of Trump not seen since he took over the White House.
The poll, like all polls, was a snapshot in time and offered no indication of Democratic unity.
Biden’s support in the polls did rise among black voters but fell among Hispanic voters, although the surveys had relatively small sample sizes for both demographic groups.
The poll also revealed deep generational rifts within the Democratic Party.
When it comes to whether Biden is fit to serve another term, 77% of Democrats under 45 think the president is too old to be effective, while only 49% of those over 45 agree.
Similarly, 56% of Democrats under 45 approve of Biden’s job performance, and 90% of Democrats over 45 view him favorably.
The debate was successful in another of Biden’s goals: getting voters to pay attention to the race. As a result of the highly publicized debate, the share of voters paying attention to the race increased by 9 percentage points.
The poll found that more voters said Biden’s reelection in November would be a risky choice for the country than did those who said the same about Trump: 63% said Biden was a risky choice, compared with 56% who said Trump was a risk.
About one in four Democrats said Biden was a risky choice rather than a safe one, and they were nearly twice as likely to see Biden as Republicans who saw Trump as a risk.
Voters viewed both candidates as equally dangerous in April.
Biden faces headwinds that go beyond age.
The Times/Siena poll found that the economy and inflation were top issues for voters both before and after the debate, and Trump has overwhelming support from voters who prioritize those issues.
Voters also look back on Trump’s time in office much more fondly than Biden’s: Only 34% say Biden has made the country better, while 47% say the same about Trump’s time in office. And in nearly every demographic group, more voters say Biden has made the country worse than better, with the biggest exception being Black voters.
A majority of voters (50 percent to 39 percent) said Trump is best able to deal with whatever the most important issue facing the country is.
Ruth Igielnik, Nicholas Nehamas and Camille Baker Contributed report.
Here’s what’s important to know about the Times/Siena poll:
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We spoke with 1,532 registered voters from June 28 to July 2, 2024.
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Our poll is conducted in both English and Spanish using a live interviewer over the phone. For this poll, approximately 93 percent of respondents were contacted by mobile phone. You can see what questions were asked and in what order the questions were asked here.
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Voters were selected for the survey from lists of registered voters, which contain information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, ensuring that surveys reach the right number of voters by party, race, and geography. The poll involved more than 190,000 phone calls to more than 113,000 voters.
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To further ensure that our results reflect the entire electorate, not just those who intend to vote, we place emphasis on respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, such as those without a college degree. For more information about respondent characteristics and the weighted sample, see “Sample Composition” on the Methodology page.
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Polls of registered voters have a sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should most often reflect the opinions of the entire population, but many other issues introduce additional sources of error. If you’re calculating the difference between two values (for example, a candidate’s lead in a political race), the margin of error is twice as large.
Full results and detailed methodology can be found here. If you’d like to learn more about how and why we conduct our survey, check out our answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own question.
