Poll: Debate aftermath damages Biden and Democrats — but matchup with Trump is unchanged
CORRECTION (July 14, 8:46 p.m. ET): Due to an error with the original polling documents, a previous version of this article misstated the vote shares and margins for the multicandidate ballot test. Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by 3 points in the six-way ballot test, not the other way around.
A new national NBC News poll — conducted after President Joe Biden’s bad debate performance and before a gunman fired at former President Donald Trump and rallygoers in Pennsylvania on Saturday — found the presidential contest remaining stable and competitive, with Biden trailing former President Donald Trump by 2 points in the survey.
The result was well within the poll’s margin of error and had the same margin as April’s survey.
Still, the survey showed the toll the debate and its aftermath took on the president and his party — though it's unclear how public sentiment in a shocked nation will shift in the wake of Saturday's shooting.
In the poll, more than 60% of Democrats said they would prefer someone else as the party’s presidential nominee. Almost 80% of all voters reported having concerns about Biden’s mental and physical fitness.
And the popularity of the Democratic Party declined, matching its all-time low in the three-decade history of the NBC News poll.
Yet the 2024 head-to-head matchup was relatively unchanged, at least for that moment — partly because of voter sentiment about not just Biden but also Trump. That included a majority of voters continuing to hold negative views of the former president, while Trump faced deficits versus Biden on the questions of temperament and being honest and trustworthy.
Another reason for the unchanged race is the degree to which political partisans remained locked in on their choices, with 71% of respondents saying the debate made no difference in how they will vote in November.
And a third explanation is that the debate only confirmed voters’ previous perceptions of Biden, says Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted this survey with Democrat Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.
“Numbers change when new information is presented,” McInturff said. “The voters have been trying to tell us for a very long time that they have concerns about Biden serving a second term.”
Horwitt notes that the lack of change in the race is a “consequential” story — and one that’s not favorable to Biden’s campaign.
“[Biden’s] numbers were already low. And coming out of the debate, the trajectory of the race has not changed,” Horwitt said. “That’s the bigger story coming out of the debate.”
Most Democrats — 62% — would prefer another party leader
This poll, conducted July 7-9, came as a number of prominent Democrats and Hollywood personalities called for the president to exit the race, though many Democrats and key segments of the party’s base are standing behind Biden.
(The poll was also conducted before Biden’s news conference Thursday and rally Friday in Detroit.)
In the survey, just 33% of Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents said they were satisfied with Biden as their party’s presidential nominee, versus 62% who say they would have preferred someone else.
By contrast, 71% of Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents say they were satisfied with Trump as the Republican nominee, compared with 27% who would have preferred someone else.
Additionally, a combined 79% of all voters — including 61% of Democrats — say they had "major" or "moderate" concerns that Biden, at age 81, might not have the necessary mental and physical health to be president. That is up from the 74% of all voters who said that in the September 2023 News poll and from the 76% who said it in January.
That compares with 58% of voters who said they had major or moderate concerns about Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, and with 50% who had concerns about Trump, at age 78, not having the mental and physical health to be president.
And the poll found Biden losing ground to Trump on key presidential attributes since the debate.
Trump held a 29-point lead over Biden on which candidate was better seen as having the necessary mental and physical health to be president — up from Trump’s 19-point advantage on this question in the April NBC News poll.
By a 49%-31% margin, voters picked Trump as better than Biden on being competent and effective. In April’s poll, Trump’s edge here was 11 points. (And in NBC’s 2020 polling, it was Biden with a 9-point lead on this question.)
Biden, meanwhile, held a 16-point advantage over Trump on having the right temperament to be president, as well as a 15-point lead on being honest and trustworthy. (But in 2020, Biden held larger leads over Trump on these qualities, especially on temperament.)
The stable Biden-Trump (and Harris-Trump) race
Despite those changes since the debate, the poll showed a continuation of a stable race between Biden and Trump.
In a head-to-head matchup, Trump led Biden by 2 points among registered voters, 45% to 43%, which is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
In April’s poll, the contest stood at Trump 46%, Biden 44%.
A combined 12% of voters in the current survey said they prefer a different candidate, wouldn’t vote or are undecided between Biden and Trump — higher than in any other NBC News poll this election cycle.
Horwitt, the Democratic pollster, said it’s noteworthy that Trump’s numbers hadn't changed since the debate. “While the focus is on Biden and his struggles at this stage, Donald Trump has not moved the race more to his advantage either,” he said.
In the matchup, Trump enjoyed advantages among men (52% to 36%), white voters (52% to 38%) and white voters without college degrees (62% to 29%).
Biden was ahead among Black voters (69% to 12%), Latinos (54% to 38%), whites with college degrees (52% to 36%), women (50% to 39%) and independents (39% to 30%).
The candidates were essentially tied among voters ages 18 to 34 (Trump 43%, Biden 41%).
In a hypothetical matchup featuring Trump running against Vice President Kamala Harris — if Biden were no longer the presumptive Democratic nominee — the former Republican president also led Harris by a 2-point margin, 47% to 45%.
And in a contest featuring third-party candidates, the NBC News poll found Trump at 40% among registered voters, Biden at 37%, independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 10%, Jill Stein at 3%, Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver at 2% and Cornel West at 1%.
The close congressional ballot was essentially unchanged, with 47% of voters preferring a Democratic-controlled Congress and 46% wanting Republicans in charge. (In April, it was 47% GOP, 46% Democratic.)
Biden’s approval rating drops to 40%
The poll found Biden’s job rating standing at 40% approval, 58% disapproval — down slightly from 42% approval, 56% disapproval in April, though the movement is within the margin of error.
In the history of the NBC News poll, that 40% approval rating for Biden was lower than every other recent first-term president had in the summer before their re-election — except for George H.W. Bush, whose approval rating stood at 34% at this point in 1992 before he lost.
Biden’s rating was 1 point lower than Trump’s 41% approval rating in the July 2020 NBC poll, before Trump's failed re-election bid.
“Biden looks more like the two incumbents who lost rather than any incumbent who won,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster.
Unpopular candidates, unpopular parties — even an unpopular first lady
What also stood out in the poll was the unpopularity of all political figures and institutions the survey measured — from Biden and Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court and even the first lady.
The most unpopular figure or institution in the new NBC News poll, in terms of net positive-negative rating, was the Democratic Party, with 31% of voters holding positive views of the party, versus 50% who holding negative views.
That net rating for the Democratic Party (-19) tied the party’s all-time low mark in the history of the NBC News poll. The party’s rating was 37% positive, 47% negative (-10) in April.
That was followed by Harris (-18), Biden (-17), Trump (-15), the Republican Party (-14), Kennedy (-12) and the U.S. Supreme Court (-12).
Also holding a net-negative rating in the poll was first lady Jill Biden, with 31% of voters seeing her positively, compared with 41% viewing her negatively (-10).
That’s a precipitous drop for the first lady from the only other time the NBC News poll measured her, in January 2021 right before her husband took office.
In that poll, she held a 40% positive, 26% negative rating (+14).
The NBC News poll of 800 registered voters — 660 reached via cellphone — was conducted July 7-9, and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.5 percentage points.
