Former President Donald Trump is the stronger candidate to protect democracy, a Washington Post poll found Wednesday, undercutting the Biden campaign’s leading reelection pitch.
Polling of six swing states that President Joe Biden won in 2020 shows that voters believe Trump is a greater defender of democracy than Biden, outpacing the current president by 11 points.
“Which candidate do you think would do a better job handling each of the following? Threats to democracy in the U.S.,” the Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University poll asked respondents:
- Trump: 44 percent
- Biden: 33 percent
- Neither: 16 percent
- Both: 7 percent
The poll sampled 3,515 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from April to May with a ± 2.9 percentage point margin of error.
POLL: President Trump is the strongest candidate to protect democracy.
DEFENDER OF DEMOCRACYhttps://t.co/7L3gUoMSJa pic.twitter.com/eXdPTRtBJn
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) June 26, 2024
Some Democrats are worried about Biden’s strategy of campaigning on democracy, especially after several legal challenges were thrown at Trump and a Manhattan jury convicted him in May.
Inflation, immigration, and crime are much larger concerns among voters, polls consistently show. Trump leads in those categories.
“It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary,” a Democrat strategist close to the Biden campaign told Axios.
“Even for those close to the center, there is a hesitance to raise skepticism or doubt about the current path, for fear of being viewed as disloyal,” another person in Biden’s orbit said.
“Many Americans don’t recognize Biden’s custodianship of our democracy, which is a bad sign for his campaign,” Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, told the Post.
Comments are closed.