President Joe Biden appears to be losing support for his 2024 reelection bid among key voting blocs Democrats typically win by large margins, according to recent polling data.
Biden won significant majorities among blacks, Hispanics, young voters and women last cycle, beating former President Donald Trump by double digits in nearly every group. However, national and battleground state polling for a 2024 hypothetical rematch between the two indicates Biden may be losing support among these key demographics while Trump is gaining ground.
In 2020, Biden secured 87% of the black vote, compared to Trump’s 12%, according to Edison Research’s exit polls.
However, recent polling suggests Biden is on track to lose a significant portion of black voters’ support in 2024.
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A GenForward survey from the University of Chicago released on Tuesday found that Biden received only 63% support among black voters compared to Trump’s 17%, while 20% said they wouldn’t back either candidate. An Emerson College poll released Dec. 8 and an Economist/YouGov survey published Wednesday found Biden leading Trump with similar margins among the electorate.
Additionally, recent polling suggests Biden has lost support with Hispanic voters while Trump has gained ground. The exit polls found that Biden led Trump by 65% to 32% last cycle among the group.
However, the GenForward poll indicated Biden only has a 6-point lead among Hispanic voters, and other surveys have found even smaller margins between the two leading frontrunners.
“What is really interesting about the polling is not that President Biden is slipping among core Democratic constituencies like younger voters and Black and Hispanic voters,” Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The fascinating part is that former President Trump is gaining some of that support. That seems to be attributable to a general sense that voters think they were better off when President Trump was in office.”
Minorities’ lack of enthusiasm for Biden may be due to dissatisfaction with his economic policies over the last few years, according to recent polling.
The GenForward found that only 25% and 20% of black voters described the economy as “very” or “somewhat good.”
A CBS News survey released in early November found that both crucial voting blocs don’t expect their financial situation to improve with a second Biden term. Hispanic voters were more likely to believe they’ll be better off financially if Trump returns to the White House.
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Other national and crucial battleground state polls also found tight margins between Biden and Trump among minority voters.
An early December NPR/PBS/Marist Poll indicated that among non-white voters, Biden only has a 53% to 42% lead over Trump.
In Michigan, only 54% of minority voters said they would vote for Biden, while 38% backed Trump, according to a CNN/SSRS survey released Monday. The same pollster found similar margins in Georgia, where 65% of the voting bloc supported Biden as opposed to 28% for Trump.
An early November New York Times survey of six critical battlegrounds — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada — found that the more diverse the state was, the worse Biden fared.
McHenry pointed to a recent Wall Street Journal survey that found 49% of voters said Trump’s policies helped them compared to only 23% who said the same of Biden’s, which he believes could be attributable for these minority voters leaving the president’s side.
“That’s a stunning rebuke of President Biden’s tenure,” said McHenry.
Biden also appears to be losing his hold on younger voters, as the gap between the president and Trump is closing.
Among 18-to-29-year-olds, Biden held a 24-point lead against Trump in 2020, and ended up six points ahead with voters aged 30 to 49, according to the exit polls.
However, the president is currently beating Trump by only four points among those aged 18 to 26, and is ahead eight points with 27-to-40-year-olds, according to the GenForward poll. An NPR/PBS/Marist Poll found Biden leading by only two points among those under 45, while the Emerson College survey indicated Trump was actually up by nearly 14 points with 30-to-39-year-olds.
Biden is losing to Trump among those aged 18 to 49 in both Michigan and Georgia by 10 and seven points, respectively, the CNN/SSRS polls found. A Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey released Dec. 5 yielded similar results in the swing states of Arizona, Florida and Georgia, with Biden trailing by several points among those under 45.
McHenry believes the shift of younger voters away from Biden has “accelerated” since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, citing a recent poll his firm conducted in the battleground state of Wisconsin that found these individuals don’t approve of the president supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.
Kyle Kondik, nonpartisan polling analyst and managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, believes young voters’ finances and their stance on the Israel-Hamas war could be driving factors for why Biden is losing support among the electorate.
“A possible contributor to Biden’s weak standing with these voters may include the economy and inflation,” Kondik wrote on Nov. 29. “Other potential contributors could be Biden’s unsuccessful effort to forgive some student debt for tens of millions of Americans and, more recently, how Biden has handled the aftermath of the Hamas strike on Israel in early October.”
For instance, the NYT survey of the six battleground states found that of those aged 18 to 29 who backed Biden in 2020, only 11% say the economy is “excellent” or “good.”
However, Kondik isn’t convinced that the polling is necessarily indicative of where these voters will end up in 2024, he told the DCNF.
“I think there are some good reasons to think that Biden’s problems with young people and nonwhite voters are overstated, at least in the sense that I doubt that ultimately the GOP nominee will come anywhere close to winning these key subgroups,” Kondik said. “That said, any slippage is important given the close margins that decide American presidential elections.”
Recent polling also suggests that Biden is losing some support among female voters, who the exit polls found backed the president by 15 points more than they did Trump in 2020.
The president had a 7-point lead over Trump among women in the GenForward poll, and other polling finds Biden up anywhere from two to five points.
Conversely, Biden trailed Trump by several points among the female electorate in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Arizona, according to the Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll.
Biden could be losing support among females due to the spike in inflation seen under his presidency, as a plurality of the voters said that was their top issue ahead of 2024 in the GenForward survey.
“All these polls point to Democrats nominating someone who they aren’t actually enthusiastic about and may not show up to support in the fall. As so many Democrats talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy, it’s hard to believe they’re going to just go ahead and nominate someone who looks like a lock to lose to him,” said McHenry.
The RealClearPolitics (RCP) average for a 2024 national Democratic and Republican primary, based on the most recent polling, indicates Biden and Trump are leading their respective fields with 68% and 60% support, respectively. However, Biden is currently trailing Trump by 2.3 points in the RCP average for a head-to-head matchup.
Neither Biden nor Trump’s campaigns responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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