Biden Leads Trump By 9% Points on Eve of Democratic National Convention

By Staff, The Independent

The United States’ Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continues to lead current president Donald Trump in the polls by nearly double-digit margins as the two parties prepare for their quadrennial conventions that will take place mostly online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump — whose response to the Covid-19 crisis and protests against police brutality have stoked fierce resentment among Democratic and many Independent voters — trailed Biden by 9 percentage points nationally in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday.

In other new polls, from CBS/YouGov and Fox News, Biden held advantages of 10 points and 7 points, respectively.

On the surface, the 2020 electoral landscape looks rosy for the Democrats. Polling figures show Biden with a steady edge over the president in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and several others.

Democrats were projecting an image of unity on the eve of their national convention. The four-day event commences on Monday with keynote speeches from Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and former First Lady Michelle Obama, respective embodiments of the party’s liberal and traditional wings.

But Biden’s lead over Trump shows some signs of potential slippage, most notably in the form of a lingering enthusiasm gap.

His firm standing in the polls is not thanks to pro-Biden sentiment — it’s rather fueled by anti-Trump sentiment.

While 50 per cent of the 900 registered voters polled last week by the Wall Street Journal/NBC News said they would vote for Biden, compared to just 41 per cent who said they would vote for Trump, most said it’s their opposition to the president — and not their enthusiasm for Biden — that mostly underlies their electoral position.

Fifty-eight per cent of Biden voters said their support for him is based more on their opposition to Trump, while just 38 per cent said it’s based on their support for the actual candidate, the poll found.

That contrasts sharply to Trump’s voters, 74 per cent of whom said they are more for the president, compared to just 20 per cent who said they are more against Biden.

Trump’s campaign is battling its own demons, of course, which explains why he’s the underdog despite having all the advantages of incumbency.

His approval rating over the last few months has remained stubbornly low, driven down by perceptions of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his response to a reinvigorated Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of several black Americans dying in police custody.