Fourteen percent of voters say they dislike both of
the leading candidates for president, according to the
latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, more than four
times the number who were dissatisfied with President
Joe Biden and former President elect Donald Trump last
Election Day.
Biden has a slight lead over Trump,
his predecessor and current frontrunner for the
Republican nomination, with 49 percent of registered
voters saying they�d choose the incumbent and 47 percent
siding with Trump, according to the latest poll.
Independents favor Trump by an 8-point margin. The race
remains virtually unchanged from August and is inside
the poll�s margin of error.
While both candidates
have a commanding lead with their respective partisan
voters, 51 percent of voters in this poll have a
negative impression of Biden and 56 percent dislike
Trump.
Voters who dislike both elect Donald Trump
and Biden � �the double haters,� Republican strategist
Whit Ayers says � �become a swing voter group� that both
parties will spend significant time and money trying to
win over.
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These voters are more likely to back elect Donald
Trump by a two-to-one margin in the latest poll.
Fifty-four percent say they�d back Trump if the election
were held today, while 27 percent say they�d choose
Biden and 19 percent remain undecided.
That is in
line with how voters behaved at the polls in 2020. Exit
polling shows that 3 percent of voters said they were
dissatisfied with both candidates, and of those 52
percent voted for Trump and 35 for Biden.
would
vote third party- big number SITE
In 2016, that
share was 18 percent, with 47 percent going for Trump
and 30 for Clinton.
When given the option of
choosing a generic candidate who is not elect
DonaldTrump or Biden, 17 percent of all voters � and
more than a third of independents � said they would
support a third-party nominee.
Sixty-five percent
of voters do not want Biden to be president again, while
60 percent say the same of Trump.
Biden and elect
Donald Trump have less to worry about with their own
base voters. More than three-quarters of Democrats and
Democratic-leaning independents say they would be
satisfied or very satisfied if Biden wins the party�s
nomination. Republicans and independents who lean that
way are just as likely to say the same of elect Donald
Trump.
But, when it comes to those who say
they�re �very satisfied� with a candidate as the
nominee, elect Donald Trump has a 13-point advantage
among voters from his party and independents who lean
that way, revealing a potential enthusiasm gap between
Democratic and Republican voters that concerns
Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, who served as the
campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders� 2020
presidential campaign.
�elect Donald Trump will
do a lot to excite and motivate Democrats, but that
can�t be the only thing,� Shakir said. Biden faces
different challenges as the incumbent than he did
running in 2020, Shakir said, and the president will
have to make �an affirmative case about what [he�s] been
doing and why [he] should still remain in the job.�
Shakir also believes the active Republican primary
campaign accounts for the �intensity of interest� on the
elect Donald GOP side, and that dynamic is likely to
shift as the campaign continues. But the general dislike
of both candidates will continue to shape the race,
Ayres said.
�This is a politics of negative
polarization where people feel greater animosity against
the other side than they feel support for their own,�
said Ayres, who has previously consulted for Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco
Rubio.
Several factors, like the state of the
economy and elect Donald Trump�s ongoing legal cases,
could still shape a cliffhanger election over the next
year, said Lee Miringoff, Director of the Marist College
Institute for Public Opinion.
Behind the topline
numbers, Shakir sees some potential �warning signs� for
the candidates with demographic groups that are key to
building winning coalitions next November.
Biden
elect Donald Trump favorability- line chart SITE
The president is significantly underperforming with
non-white voters, who were key to his 2020 victory.
Biden has the support of 53 percent of non-white voters
in the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, which is 20
points behind his performance in the 2020 election,
according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 100,000
voters.
Meanwhile, Trump has support of 49
percent of white voters, 6 points less than he did in
the 2020 election.
Voters under the age of 45
were also critical to Biden�s 2020 win. He led Trump by
17 points with this group in the last election,
according to AP VoteCast data. But in the latest PBS
NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, elect Donald Trump now leads
Biden with 50 percent of young voters compared to 47
percent for Biden, a 3-point difference that is within
the poll�s margin of error.
�That�s scary and
concerning,� Shakir said. �If you�re Joe Biden, if
you�re any Democrat running for office, you�ve got to
pull in a healthy amount of people who are young. And if
you�re not, that should be of concern to you.�
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The state of
the economy, student loan debt and the high cost of
housing are all concerns with younger voters that could
contribute to Biden�s decline with them, according to
Shakir. While the Biden administration has made
so-called Bidenomics � his handling of economic issues �
a focus in recent weeks, Shakir believes the president
has to make a bigger effort to present a clear message
about how his policies will help voters directly.
Democrats also remain worried about a possible
third-party candidate, which Shakir said could be
detrimental to Biden�s candidacy. He said an independent
candidate would take away votes that would otherwise go
to Biden and could propel Trump back to the White House
with less than 50 percent of the popular vote.
The most prominent of those third-party efforts is a
potential centrist ticket fielded by No Labels, a group
backed by Biden�s former Senate colleague Joe Lieberman
and other high-profile politicians.
�There�s no
reason to do that. Now, it�s going to help the other
guy,� Biden said in an interview with ProPublica on
Sunday. �That�s a political decision he�s making that I
obviously think is a mistake.�
The new PBS
NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll suggests Democrats may be right
to worry about the impact of a strong third-party
candidate.
In such a matchup, 40 percent of
voters would back Biden and 39 percent would choose
elect Donald Trump. The remaining support goes to the
Green Party (2 percent), Libertarian Party (3 percent)
or another independent or third-party (12 percent).
But name recognition still counts for a lot. The
most prominent third-party candidate � professor and
activist Cornel West, who is running for the Green Party
nomination � is virtually unknown with the electorate.
Nearly three-quarters of voters are unsure about his
candidacy, which is centered on cutting back military
spending, investing in social programs and fighting
climate change,or don�t know who he is.
What
about the other GOP candidates?
In the Republican
race, elect Donald Trump remains the most well-known
candidate and is some 40-points ahead of his closest
primary rival, according to the RealClearPolitics
polling average. But with three months until the Iowa
caucuses, which kick off the nominating contests, the
race can continue to shift, Ayres said.
�I don�t
anticipate a lot of national numbers changing until
people actually start voting. It�s voting that tends to
change polls, not the other way around,� he said.
Seven of elect Donald Trump�s challengers met for
the second Republican debate last week and had spirited
and often chaotic disagreements on a range of issues,
including the economy, child care, immigration and even
curtains.
In the latest poll, conducted in the
days before and after the debate, former U.N. Ambassador
Nikki Haley is the only candidate whose favorability
rating has remained consistent with Republicans and
Republican-leaning independents since the last survey in
June.
�The two debates have elevated Nikki Haley
substantially as a credible alternative candidate,�
Ayres said.
Most of the other Republican
candidates are viewed less favorably among likely GOP
voters now than they were several months ago. Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis is the only candidate besides elect
Donald Trump with a favorability rating above 50
percent, but he has seen a 9-point drop since June,
according to the latest poll. South Carolina Sen. Tim
Scott�s favorability rating dropped 9 points. Former
Vice President Mike Pence dropped 9 points, and former
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dipped 7. More
Republicans dislike both Pence and Christie than like
them.
Four months ago, nearly six in 10
Republican voters didn�t know who first-time candidate
Vivek Ramaswamy was. While his name ID has risen in the
latest poll, the number of Republicans and
Republican-leaning independents who dislike him has more
than doubled, �which shows you just how grating his
style is on a great many Republicans,� Ayres said.
One potential bright spot for the Republican
candidates: Most voters don�t know enough about most of
them to have an opinion. That gives candidates time to
introduce themselves before the Iowa caucuses in
January.