Voters doubt Biden’s leadership and prefer Trump, Times/Siena Poll shows

President Biden is struggling to overcome doubts about his leadership within his own party and widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s direction, leaving him behind Donald J. Trump just as their election battle is about to begin, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College.

With eight months to go until the November election, Biden’s 43 percent support lags behind Trump’s 48 percent in the national survey of registered voters.

Only one in four voters think the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Mr. Biden’s policies have harmed them personally as believe his policies have helped them. A majority of voters believe the economy is in bad shape. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Biden’s handling of his job has reached 47 percent, higher than in the Times/Siena polls at any point during his presidency.

The poll offers a series of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has better united his party, even amid an ongoing primary campaign.

Mr Biden has marched through the early candidate states with only nominal opposition. But the poll showed Democrats remain deeply divided over the prospect of 81-year-old President Biden leading the party again. About as many Democratic primary voters said Biden should not be the nominee in 2024 as he should be — with opposition strongest among voters under 45 years old.

Trump’s ability to consolidate the Republican base better than Biden and unite his own party’s base is evident in the current thinking of 2020 voters. Mr. Trump wins 97 percent of those who say they four voted for him years ago, and virtually none of his former supporters said they will vote for Mr. Biden. By contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his voters in 2020, while 10 percent say he now supports Mr. Trump.

“It’s going to be a very difficult decision — I’m seriously considering not voting,” said Mamta Misra, 57, a Democrat and economics professor in Lafayette, La., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. will come out anyway. Things are going to be bad for the Democrats. I don’t know why they don’t think of someone else.”

Trump’s five-point lead in the survey, conducted in late February, is slightly wider than in the last Times/Siena national poll of registered voters in December. Among the likely electorate, Trump currently leads by four percentage points.

In last year’s survey, Mr. Trump led by two points among registered voters and Mr. Biden led by two points among the expected electorate.

One of the more ominous findings for Mr. Biden in the new poll is that the historic lead Democrats have had among working-class voters of color who have not gone to college continues to erode.

According to exit polls, Mr. Biden won 72 percent of those voters in 2020, giving him a nearly 50-point lead over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Biden with only a narrow lead among non-white non-college voters: 47 percent to 41 percent.

The survey repeatedly shows a tension gap between the two parties, with just 23 percent of Democratic primary voters saying they were excited about Mr. Biden — half of Republicans who said they were about Mr. Trump. Significantly more Democrats said they were dissatisfied or angry because Biden was the leader of the party (32 percent) than Republicans who said the same about Trump (18 percent).

Both Mr Trump and Mr Biden are unpopular. Mr. Trump had a weak favorable rating of 44 percent; Biden did even worse, with 38 percent. Among the 19 percent of voters who said they disapproved of both likely nominees — an unusually large 2024 cohort that pollsters and political strategists sometimes call “double haters” — Mr. Biden actually led Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 33 percent.

The candidate who won over such ‘double haters’ won the elections in both 2016 and 2020.

But for now, dissatisfaction with the state of the country is clearly hurting Mr. Biden’s prospects. Two-thirds of the country believes the nation is heading in the wrong direction — and Trump is winning 63 percent of those voters.

The share of voters who believe the country is on the right track remains a bleak and small minority at 24 percent. Still, even that figure is a marked improvement from inflation’s peak days in the summer of 2022, when only 13 percent of voters thought the country was moving in the right direction.

“If we get another four years of Trump, we’re going to be a little bit better economically,” said Oscar Rivera, a 39-year-old independent voter who owns a roofing company in Rochester, NY.

Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed much more favorably by voters than those of Mr. Biden. Fully 40 percent of voters said Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to just 18 percent who said the same about Biden’s.

Only 12 percent of independent voters like Rivera said Biden’s policies had helped them personally, compared to 43 percent who said his policies had hurt them.

Mr. Rivera, a Puerto Rican, said he doesn’t like the way Mr. Trump talks about immigration and the southern border but plans to vote for him anyway. “Biden? I don’t know,” Mr. Rivera said. “It seems we are weak, America is weak. We need someone stronger.”

Overall, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump were dead, even among esteemed independent voters, at 42 percent each.

But time and time again, the Times/Siena poll revealed how Mr. Trump has carved into more traditional Democratic constituencies while maintaining his position among Republican groups. For example, the gender gap no longer benefits Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Biden four years ago, are now equally divided, while men gave Trump a nine-point lead. The poll showed Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the black vote is also declining.

There are, of course, unpredictable

The poll found that 53 percent of voters currently believe Trump committed serious federal crimes, up from 58 percent in December. But looked at another way, Trump’s current lead over Biden has been built with a significant number of voters who believe he is a criminal.

The country, meanwhile, remains divided over some of its thorniest domestic and international issues.

By a narrow margin, more voters favor making it more difficult for migrants at the southern border to seek asylum (49 percent to 43 percent). Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden made dueling appearances at the border this week; Illegal border crossings reached a record high at the end of 2023.

As the conflict between Israel and Hamas rages in its fifth month, 40 percent of voters said they sympathized more with Israel, compared to 24 percent who said they sympathized more with the Palestinians. Mr. Trump won 70 percent of those who primarily supported Israel; Mr Biden won 68 percent of those who sided with the Palestinians, even as he faced demonstrations and a protest vote over his pro-Israel stance.

Philip Kalarickal, a 51-year-old anesthesiologist in Decatur, Georgia, is a Democrat who is dismayed by Mr. Biden’s handling of the humanitarian fallout from the conflict in Gaza.

“Joe Biden should do more to ensure that the Israeli government does this in a way that provides them with security but without the civilian toll,” said Dr. Kalarickal, adding that he would reluctantly support Mr. Biden this fall since he lives in a swing state.

“I understand that my voice or lack of voice has consequences, and I look at the alternative and it is worse than the current one,” said Dr. Kalarickal. “But I would like to express my dissatisfaction. The way I vote doesn’t mean I like it.”

The Biden campaign hopes that more and more voters like Mr. Kalarickal will return to their usual partisan patterns in the coming months. The return of such reluctant Democrats is one reason the Biden campaign has been optimistic that the polls will narrow and eventually reverse as the choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden becomes clearer.

Trump’s Republican rival Nikki Haley, who has argued he will lose in November, leads Biden by double the margin over the former president: a hypothetical 45 to 35 percent. But she has struggled to gain traction in the primaries and the poll predicts big losses on Super Tuesday next week, with 77 percent of Republican primary voters choosing Trump over her.

Alyce McFadden And Ruth Igielnik reporting contributed.

The New York Times/Siena College survey of 980 registered voters nationwide was conducted on cell and landline phones from February 25 to 28, 2024, using live interviewers. The margin of sampling error for the presidential vote choice question is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points among registered voters. Crosstabs and methodology are available here.