WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump has established a sizable lead over President Joe Biden in the White House race since the two candidates debated last week, according to separate opinion polls published on Wednesday by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Biden vowed to stay in the 2024 presidential race during a call with campaign staff on Wednesday and sought to reassure top Democrats on Capitol Hill that he is fit for reelection, despite his halting, shaky debate performance last week.
The New York Times and Siena College poll showed Trump, a Republican, building a 6 percentage point lead – 49% to 43% – over Biden, a Democrat, among registered voters that the Times considered likely to cast ballots in the Nov. 5 election. It was Trump’s largest lead in a Times/Siena poll since 2015, when he was campaigning ahead of his 2016 presidential election victory. Among all registered voters in the poll, Trump led by 9 points.
The Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump with a 6 point lead over Biden, compared to a 2 point lead in a survey that the Journal carried out in February.
In both polls, which were conducted nationwide, respondents noted that Biden’s age, 81, was weighing on his appeal. Some 80% of respondents in the Journal poll, which surveyed 1,500 registered voters from June 29 through July 2, said Biden was too old to seek a second term. That poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
The Times poll, which surveyed 1,532 registered voters from June 28-July 2, found that large slices of every demographic – including Black voters and those who said they would still vote for him – saw Biden as “just too old to be an effective president.” It had a margin of error of 2.8 points for registered voters.
Biden’s debate performance last Thursday against Trump, 78, sparked concern among Democrats about his future as their presidential candidate.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted July 1-2 found Trump and Biden tied among registered voters with 40% support each. That poll found one in three Democrats believe Biden should drop out of the race.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)
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