A up-to-date ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday presented some results that should make the Trump campaign quite confident; Donald Trump still has only a 40 percent approval rating in this poll; but that compares favorably with Joe Biden’s 32 percentThis poll surveyed 1,141 adults from the “general American population.”
ABC News reported This is Trump’s highest approval rating in most of the past four years, when he has typically been between 30 and 40 percent.
Biden’s numbers were slightly worse: 32 percent of Americans said they had a positive opinion of the president, 55 percent said they had a negative opinion, nine percent said they had no opinion, and 4 percent said they didn’t know.
As for Biden’s re-election prospects, 61 percent of Americans said he should end his 2024 campaign and let the Democratic Party put forward another candidate, while 37 percent said he should stay in the race. One percent of respondents skipped the question.
That’s the point: A difference of eight points is not “slightly worse.” That is way outside the margin of error.
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The hill also has some pretty impressive understatement.
The figures follow a dramatic political week that culminated this week with the Republican National Convention, where Trump was officially named the party’s presidential nominee. Just days earlier, Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, injuring his ear and killing a bystander. Two other attendees were injured but are in stable condition.
Biden, meanwhile, faces increasing pressure from leaders in his own party to resign amid concerns about his ability to beat Trump and win a second term. Concerns were heightened by his disastrous debate performance last month, in which he frequently paused and appeared to lose his train of thought.
Dramatic is perhaps an understatement. The last few weeks have been disastrous for Joe Biden and his re-election campaign, from the president’s disastrous debate performance to the jarring contrast between the image of a powerful, vital Trump leaping to his feet after nearly being killed by an assassin and the tired, pale senior Joe Biden shuffling to Air Force One after a COVID diagnosis. After all that, the well-executed Republican National Convention was just the icing on the cake.
It’s a miracle that even 32 percent of the population sees Joe Biden as anything but a disaster. These people are probably part of the roughly one-third of the population that would vote for a Democrat even if that Democrat were a stuffed armadillo.
As always, there is a catch: The ABC/Ipsos poll apparently only surveyed the “general population”, and certain minority groups are overvalued:
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted July 19-20, 2024 by Ipsos using probability-based KnowledgePanel®. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample of 1,141 adults ages 18 and older, with oversampling of Black and Hispanic respondents. One respondent was removed from the final data because he or she declined all survey items.
And of course we don’t elect presidents that way. Such national polls are general indicators of the national mood, but as always, we look at the battlefields. That is where the election is decided – and that is where Trump is ahead.
