Joe Biden holds a 12 percentage-point lead (53% to 41%) over President Donald Trump among registered voters and a 10-point advantage (54% to 44%) among likely voters as the Democratic National Convention begins, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.
Other results from the survey include:
- Enthusiasm among Biden supporters has increased from 28% in March to 48%, although it is still far behind Trump, with 65% of his backers expressing strong enthusiasm.
- The public approves by a 25-point margin (54% to 29%) Biden’s choice of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, and 54% view her as qualified to take over as president if something happened to Biden.
- Only 43% approve of Trump's job performance overall, while 55% disapprove — figures similar to last month — with 59% specifically disapproving of the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
- 68% say the economy is in not-so-good or poor shape, the most since October 2014 as the U.S. headed into the midterm elections that flipped the Senate to the Republicans and boosted their margin in the House.
- The areas in which most people think things would be better than worse if Biden were president are the handling of the country's response to the pandemic (better under Biden by a 22-point margin), healthcare (13 points) and race relations (26 points).
- Trump wins in assessments of whether safety from crime would be better or worse under Biden, where 25% say better and 32% worse.
The poll was conducted August 12-15 in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 31-26-37%, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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