Which side has the most energy heading into November? More polls will come as the midterm elections approach, but for now we’ve completed our first New York Times/Siena poll, and here are some notable takeaways:
Voters are not happy. Only 13 percent of registered voters said America was on the right track. Only 10 percent said the economy was excellent or good. And a majority of voters said the country was too politically divided to solve its challenges. By comparison, each of these numbers shows a more pessimistic electorate than in October 2020, when the pandemic was still raging and Donald J. Trump was president.
Joe Biden is in trouble. His approval rating in our poll was in the low 30s. That’s lower than we’ve ever found for Mr Trump.
Democrats would rather see someone else get the party’s nomination in 2024. Mr Biden’s age was just as important among voters as his overall job performance. Of course, he probably would have followed “someone else” to the last presidential primaries as well, but he won the nomination anyway because his opposition was weak or fractured. Still, it’s a sign that Mr. Biden is much weaker than the typical president seeking reelection. It could predict a controversial primary.
Trump isn’t doing great either. Like Mr Biden, Mr Trump has become less popular in the past two years. The number of Republicans who have an unfavorable view of him has doubled since our last poll in 2020. He is now below 50 percent in a hypothetical Republican primary in 2024.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is already at 25 percent in early test of Republican primaries. Mr. Trump may still be the frontrunner, but the polls are increasingly similar to the early polls from the Democratic primaries in 2008 — when Hillary Clinton was in an extremely close race and eventually lost to Barack Obama — than the polls for the Democratic primaries. in 2016, when she won a lengthy battle against Bernie Sanders.
Many voters don’t want to see a 2020 rematch. Biden still led Mr. Trump in a hypothetical match-up in 2024, 44 percent to 41 percent. Surprisingly, ten percent of respondents said they wouldn’t vote at all or vote for someone else if they were the two candidates, even though the interviewer didn’t offer those choices as an option.
The midterm race starts close, with voters almost evenly split on the general congressional vote (voters are asked whether they would prefer Democrats or Republicans to be in control of Congress). That’s a bit surprising, given expectations of a Republican landslide this year.
The news helps the Democrats. The news has been bad for Democrats, from recent court rulings to their frustrations at stopping mass shootings, but right now it can help the Democratic Party. About 30 percent of voters combined said that topics related to guns, abortion and democracy were the most important issue facing the country, and Democrats had a big lead among these voters. It’s a big change from earlier in the cycle, when immigration, crime and questions about school programs likely dominated the campaign — and helped Republicans.
Support for abortion rights is up in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Sixty-five percent said they thought abortion should be completely or largely legal, up from 60 percent in the latest Times/Siena poll asking about the issue, in September 2020.
Class polarization continues. In recent years, Democrats have made gains among educated voters, while Republicans have made gains among voters without a college degree. That trend is not going to stop, the poll shows. Inflation and the economy are dragging Democrats down among working-class voters—perhaps particularly among Hispanic Americans—while issues of guns, abortion rights and threats to democracy motivate the party’s highly educated white voters.
There are signs of a shifting racial coalition. For the first time in a National Times/Siena poll, Democrats’ share of support from white college graduates exceeded that of non-white voters — a notable sign of the shift in political energy in the Democratic coalition. In the 2016 congressional election, Democrats won more than 70 percent of non-white voters while losing to white college graduates.
Voters from both parties are increasingly skeptical about the country’s institutions and future. A majority of voters say the US system of government is not working and that major reforms or even a complete overhaul are needed. Most voters say the political system can no longer handle the nation’s problems, with the young in particular being pessimistic. And voters from both parties differ widely in their interpretations of events such as the January 6 storming of the Capitol.