Biden leading Trump among undecided voters, poll shows. How does it compare to 2016?
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is leading President Trump among both registered voters overall — and undecided or third-party registered voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Biden is leading Trump by eight percentage points, with 46% of registered voters backing Biden and 38% supporting Trump, according to the poll.
Among undecided or third-party voters, 61% said, if given an option between the two, they would vote for Biden and 39% said they would vote for Trump, the poll shows.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in the summer of 2016 showed that undecided voters were split between Trump and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but the majority of voters who decided in the last week of the election swung to Trump, according to Reuters.
Fifteen percent of voters were undecided just two weeks before the 2016 election — triple the amount of undecided voters in the 2012 election at the same time, according to an analysis from FiveThirtyEight. But a panel survey from the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics found evidence that a portion of voters opted for Trump last-minute as the election neared its end, the outlet reported.
Exit polling found that voters who disliked both Clinton and Trump voted for Trump by a 17-point margin, according to The Washington Post, but an April Quinnipiac University poll found Biden leading by 32 points among respondents who had an unfavorable view of both the former vice president and the current president.
Voters in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll also appeared to be concerned with the coronavirus pandemic, with 34% of people saying they were looking for a candidate with “a robust plan to help the nation recover.”
Thirty-eight percent of people polled said they support how Trump has handled the pandemic, including 20% of third-party or undecided voters.
Twenty-four percent said they were looking for a candidate who can “restore trust in American government” and 12% said were looking for someone who is “strong on healthcare” — categories that Biden leads in, according to the poll.
The poll was conducted online from July 15-21 with a sample size of 4,430 American adults, including 595 undecided registered voters and 3,744 registered voters. The credibility interval, which measures how precise the poll is, is two percentage points overall and five points for undecided or third-party voters.
Americans’ approval of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic hit a record low in July, with about two-thirds of adults disapproving as COVID-19 cases surge across the U.S., according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Sixty-seven percent of Americans surveyed from July 8 to 9 disapproved of Trump’s handling of the virus. His approval on the pandemic went from 41% in mid-June to 33% in the latest poll, while those disapproving rose from 58% to 67% — a 17-point swing.
Trump has been criticized for false statements about the U.S. death rate and how prepared states are to fight the epidemic, NBC News reported.
The United States now has 3.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases, including more than 142,000 deaths as of July 22, according to Johns Hopkins University.
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 8:02 AM with the headline "Biden leading Trump among undecided voters, poll shows. How does it compare to 2016?."