Trumps polls today

As Donald J. Trump weighs whether to open an unusually early White House campaign, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows that his post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination.

By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of tending to wounds opened by his alarming attempts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump appears to have only deepened fault lines among Republicans during his yearlong revenge tour. A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary.

Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, appears to have contributed to the decline in his standing, including among a small but important segment of Republicans who could form the base of his opposition in a potential primary contest. While 75 percent of primary voters said Mr. Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election,” nearly one in five said he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.”

Overall, Mr. Trump maintains his primacy in the party: In a hypothetical matchup against five other potential Republican presidential rivals, 49 percent of primary voters said they would support him for a third nomination.

The greatest threat to usurp Mr. Trump within the party is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was the second choice with 25 percent and the only other contender with double-digit support. Among primary voters, Mr. DeSantis was the top choice of younger Republicans, those with a college degree and those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020.

While about one-fourth of Republicans said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about Mr. DeSantis, he was well-liked by those who did. Among those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, 44 percent said they had a very favorable opinion of Mr. DeSantis — similar to the 46 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump.

Should Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump face off in a primary, the poll suggested that support from Fox News could prove crucial: Mr. Trump held a 62 percent to 26 percent advantage over Mr. DeSantis among Fox News viewers, while the gap between the two Floridians was 16 points closer among Republicans who mainly receive their news from another source.

The survey suggests that Mr. Trump would not necessarily enter a primary with an insurmountable advantage over rivals like Mr. DeSantis. His share of the Republican primary electorate is less than Hillary Clinton’s among Democrats was at the outset of the 2016 race , when she was viewed as the inevitable front-runner, but ultimately found herself embroiled in a protracted primary against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Mr. Trump’s troubles inside his party leave him hamstrung in a matchup against an unusually vulnerable incumbent.

The Times/Siena poll suggested that the fears of many Republican elites about a Trump candidacy may be well-founded: He trailed President Biden, 44 percent to 41 percent, in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 contest, despite plummeting support for Mr. Biden , with voters nationwide giving him a perilously low 33 percent job-approval rating.

A growing anyone-but-Trump vote inside the party contributed to Mr. Trump’s deficit, with 16 percent of Republicans saying that if he were the nominee they would support Mr. Biden, would back a third-party candidate, wouldn’t vote at all or remained unsure what they would do. That compared to 8 percent of Democrats who said they would similarly abandon Mr. Biden in a matchup with Mr. Trump.

For Mr. Trump, bleeding that amount of Republican support would represent a sharp increase compared with the already troubling level of the party’s vote he shed during his last race.

In 2020, 9 percent of Republicans voted for someone other than Mr. Trump, while Mr. Biden lost just 4 percent of Democrats, according to AP VoteCast , a large study of the 2020 electorate by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Associated Press.

Kenneth Abreu, a 62-year-old pharmaceutical executive from Pennsylvania, said he had voted Republican for three decades but would support Mr. Biden instead of voting again for Mr. Trump.

“Unlike all these other people who believe every word he says, I’m done,” Mr. Abreu said. “All the garbage he’s been talking about, the lies, Jan. 6, the whole thing — I just lost all respect for him.”

Still, many Republicans who favor someone else in a primary would nonetheless rally behind Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.

Richard Bechtol, a 31-year-old Republican voter in Columbus, Ohio, said he would back either Mr. DeSantis or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas over the former president. Mr. Bechtol was disturbed by Mr. Trump’s behavior that led to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I hope he doesn’t run at all,” Mr. Bechtol said of the former president.

Mr. Bechtol, a lawyer, said he found Mr. Trump’s arrogance off-putting, saw Mr. Trump as a divisive figure in the party and believed that he bore responsibility for the violence.

But he said he would support Mr. Trump in 2024 in a rematch with President Biden.

“Biden is getting bullied by the left wing of his party and I worry about his cognitive function as well — actually, I worry about that with Trump, too,” he said. “It’s really a lesser-of-two-evils situation for me.”

It is too early to tell whether the challenges for Mr. Trump inside his party will result in anything more than speed bumps on his path to the Republican nomination. Underscoring his residual strength, he is viewed favorably by 65 percent of Republicans who said they would vote against him in a primary, compared with 33 percent who said they had an unfavorable view.

“Trump did a hell of a job on the economy,” said Marie Boyce, a New York Republican in her 70s. “There isn’t anything wrong I could say about him.”

David Beard, a 69-year-old retiree in Liberal, Mo., who said he mostly relied on Social Security for his income, said he was frustrated with both political parties and all levels of government. He plans to stick with Mr. Trump in 2024, betting that was the best chance to improve the economy.

“When Trump was in office, it didn’t seem like prices went haywire,” Mr. Beard said.

He said Democrats’ efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 attack had been a pointless distraction. “The government’s whole focus should have been on the people of the United States and the situation we’re in, instead of wasting time and money trying to impeach him,” Mr. Beard said. “Nothing is being done to help the people, and I believe that with all my heart.”

About 20 percent of all registered voters said they didn’t like either Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump also trailed his successor among these voters, 39 percent to 18 percent. One in five volunteered to pollsters that they would sit out such an election, though that option had not been offered to them.

“I never thought I would say this, but it if was Biden and Trump I don’t think I would vote,” said Gretchen Aultman, a 74-year-old retired lawyer in Colorado who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. “I liked Trump’s policies, but he was so abrasive and unpolished, and having him as president was just tearing the country apart.”

Ms. Aultman said she didn’t see the current president as an acceptable alternative. “I can’t in good conscience vote for Biden,” she said. “I recognize the signs of being old, and his mental acuity is not going to last another two years.”

Between the large number of primary voters ready for another nominee, and the growing number who say they would not vote for the former president again under any circumstances, the poll suggests Mr. Trump’s biggest hurdle to winning a second term isn’t another Republican opponent — it’s himself.

John Heaphy, a 70-year-old retired software engineer in Arizona, said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 but planned to back Mr. Biden in 2024 because of the Capitol riot.

Mr. Heaphy said that Mr. Trump had incited an insurrection, and that he was shaken by the support the former president’s false claims have received from other Republicans. Indeed, according to the poll, 86 percent of Republicans who said they would support Mr. Trump in the 2024 primary said he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

“Trump lost the election,” Mr. Heaphy said. “There are too many people out there that just don’t seem like they believe in reality anymore.”

While Mr. Trump has described election integrity as the country’s most pressing concern, just 3 percent of Republicans named it as the nation’s top problem. But Mr. Trump’s response to his 2020 defeat was a significant factor in how Republicans are thinking about 2024.

Among Republicans who said they plan to vote against Mr. Trump in a primary, 32 percent said the former president’s actions threatened American democracy.

Paula Hudnall, a 51-year-old nurse in Charleston, W.Va., said Mr. Trump was right to question the results of the election. She said she didn’t blame him for the violence at the Capitol.

“Anytime you have a large gathering you’re going to have people who get out of hand and are unruly,” said Ms. Hudnall, who identified the economy and infrastructure as her top issues.

Ms. Hudnall said she was interested in learning about other Republican candidates, but that Mr. Trump already had her vote again for 2024.

The Times/Siena survey of 849 registered voters nationwide was conducted by telephone using live operators from July 5 to 7. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Cross-tabs and methodology are available here .

Isabella Grullón Paz and Nate Cohn contributed reporting.

With President Biden’s approval rating mired in the 30s and with nearly 80 percent of voters saying the country is heading in the wrong direction , all the ingredients seem to be in place for a Republican sweep in the November midterm elections.

But Democrats and Republicans begin the campaign in a surprisingly close race for control of Congress, according to the first New York Times/Siena College survey of the cycle.

Overall among registered voters, 41 percent said they preferred Democrats to control Congress compared with 40 percent who preferred Republican control.

Among likely voters, Republicans led by one percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent, reflecting the tendency for the party out of power to enjoy a turnout advantage in midterms.

The results suggest that the wave of mass shootings and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have at least temporarily insulated the Democrats from an otherwise hostile national political environment while energizing the party’s predominantly liberal activist base.

But the confluence of economic problems and resurgent cultural issues has helped turn the emerging class divide in the Democratic coalition into a chasm, as Republicans appear to be making new inroads among nonwhite and working-class voters — perhaps especially Hispanic voters — who remain more concerned about the economy and inflation than abortion rights and guns.

For the first time in a Times/Siena national survey, Democrats had a larger share of support among white college graduates than among nonwhite voters — a striking indication of the shifting balance of political energy in the Democratic coalition. As recently as the 2016 congressional elections, Democrats won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters while losing among white college graduates.

With four months to go until the election, it is far too soon to say whether the campaign will remain focused on issues like abortion and gun control long enough for Democrats to avoid a long-expected midterm rout. If it does, a close national vote would probably translate to a close race for control of Congress, as neither party enjoys a clear structural advantage in the race. Partisan gerrymandering has slightly tilted the map toward Republicans in the House, but Democrats enjoy the advantages of incumbency and superior fund-raising in key districts.

Recent unfavorable news for Democrats, in the form of Supreme Court rulings , and some tragic news nationally might ordinarily mean trouble for the party in power, but that’s not what the results suggest.

The survey began 11 days after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, when cellphones were still buzzing with news alerts about the mass shooting in Highland Park, Ill.

In an open-ended question, those who volunteered that issues related to guns, abortion or the Supreme Court were the most important problem facing the country represented about one in six registered voters combined. Those voters preferred Democratic control of Congress, 68 percent to 8 percent.

Some of the hot-button social issues thought to work to the advantage of Republicans at the beginning of the cycle, like critical race theory, have faded from the spotlight. Only 4 percent of voters combined said education, crime or immigration was the most important issue facing the country.

The Times/Siena survey is not the first to suggest that the national political environment has improved for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. On average, Democrats have gained about three points on the generic congressional ballot compared with surveys taken beforehand.

In the wake of the court’s ruling, the poll finds greater public support for legal abortion than previous Times/Siena surveys. Sixty-five percent of registered voters said abortion should be mostly or always legal, up from 60 percent of registered voters in September 2020.

The proportion of voters who opposed the court’s decision — 61 percent — was similar to the share who said they supported Roe v. Wade two years ago.

Democrats are maintaining the loyalty of a crucial sliver of predominantly liberal and highly educated voters who disapprove of Mr. Biden’s performance but care more about debates over guns, democracy and the shrinking of abortion rights than the state of the economy.

Voters who said issues related to abortion, guns or threats to democracy were the biggest problem facing the country backed Democrats by a wide margin, 66 percent to 14 percent.

For some progressive voters, recent conservative policy victories make it hard to stay on the sidelines.

Lucy Ackerman, a 23-year-old graphic designer in Durham, N.C., said Mr. Biden had repeatedly failed to live up to election promises. She recently registered with the Democratic Socialists of America. Nonetheless, she has committed herself to getting as many Democrats elected this fall as possible.

She says the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe made politics personal: She and her wife married after the decision leaked, out of fear that the court might roll back same-sex marriage rights next.

“The recent events have given me this push to do more,” she said. “I’ve gotten more involved in political efforts locally. I’ve helped sign friends up to vote.”

The liberal backlash against conservative advances in the court appears to have helped Democrats most among white college graduates, who are relatively liberal and often insulated by their affluence from economic woes. Just 17 percent of white college-educated Biden voters said an economic issue was the most important one facing the country, less than for any other racial or educational group.

Over all, white college graduates preferred Democratic control of Congress, 57-36. Women propelled Democratic strength among the group, with white college-educated women backing Democrats, 64-30. Democrats barely led among white college-educated men, 46-45.

Although the survey does not show an unusually large gender gap, the poll seems to offer some evidence that the court’s abortion ruling may do more to help Democrats among women. Nine percent of women said abortion rights was the most important issue, compared with 1 percent of men.

The fight for congressional control is very different among the often less affluent, nonwhite and moderate voters who say the economy or inflation is the biggest problem facing the country. They preferred Republican control of Congress, 62 percent to 25 percent, even though more than half of the voters who said the economy was the biggest problem also said abortion should be mostly legal.

Just 74 percent of the voters who backed Mr. Biden in the 2020 election, but who said the economy or inflation was the most important problem, said they preferred Democratic control of Congress. In contrast, Democrats were the choice of 87 percent of Biden voters who said abortion or guns was the most important issue.

The economy may be helping Republicans most among Hispanic voters, who preferred Democrats to control Congress, 41-38. Although the sample size is small, the finding is consistent with the longer-term deterioration in Democratic support among the group. Hispanics voted for Democrats by almost a 50-point margin in the 2018 midterms, according to data from Pew Research, then President Donald J. Trump made surprising gains with them in 2020.

No racial or ethnic group was likelier than Hispanic voters to cite the economy or inflation as the most important issue facing the country, with 42 percent citing an economic problem compared with 35 percent of non-Hispanic voters.

Republicans also appear poised to expand their already lopsided advantage among white voters without a college degree. They back Republicans by more than a two-to-one margin, 54-23. Even so, nearly a quarter remain undecided compared with just 7 percent of white college graduates.

As less engaged working-class voters tune in, Republicans may have opportunities for additional gains. Historically, the party out of power excels in midterm elections, in no small part by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the president’s party.

Only 23 percent of undecided voters approved of Mr. Biden’s job performance.

Silvana Read, a certified nursing assistant who lives outside Tampa, Fla., is one of the Hispanic voters whom Republicans will try to sway to capitalize on widespread dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden.

An immigrant from Ecuador, she despised Mr. Trump’s comments about women and foreigners, but voted for him because her husband convinced her it would help them financially. Now she and her husband, 56 and 60, blame Mr. Biden for their falling 401(k)s.

“My husband, he sees the news on the TV, he says, ‘I don’t think I can retire until 75,’” she said. “We can’t afford to finish paying the mortgage.”

Still, her allegiance to the Republican Party does not extend far beyond Mr. Trump. She offered no preference in the fight for control of Congress.

She does not plan to vote in the midterms.

The Times/Siena survey of 849 registered voters nationwide was conducted by telephone using live operators from July 5-7. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points. Crosstabs and methodology are available here .

Francesca Paris

President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating.

Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation. More than three-quarters of registered voters see the United States moving in the wrong direction, a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties.

Only 13 percent of American voters said the nation was on the right track — the lowest point in Times polling since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

For Mr. Biden, that bleak national outlook has pushed his job approval rating to a perilously low point. Republican opposition is predictably overwhelming, but more than two-thirds of independents also now disapprove of the president’s performance, and nearly half disapprove strongly. Among fellow Democrats his approval rating stands at 70 percent, a relatively low figure for a president, especially heading into the 2022 midterms when Mr. Biden needs to rally Democrats to the polls to maintain control of Congress.

In a sign of deep vulnerability and of unease among what is supposed to be his political base, only 26 percent of Democratic voters said the party should renominate him in 2024.

Mr. Biden has said repeatedly that he intends to run for re-election in 2024. At 79, he is already the oldest president in American history , and concerns about his age ranked at the top of the list for Democratic voters who want the party to find an alternative.

The backlash against Mr. Biden and desire to move in a new direction were particularly acute among younger voters. In the survey, 94 percent of Democrats under the age of 30 said they would prefer a different presidential nominee.

“I’m just going to come out and say it: I want younger blood,” said Nicole Farrier, a 38-year-old preschool teacher in East Tawas, a small town in northern Michigan. “I am so tired of all old people running our country. I don’t want someone knocking on death’s door.”

Ms. Farrier, a Democrat who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said she had hoped he might have been able to do more to heal the nation’s divisions, but now, as a single mother, she is preoccupied with what she described as crippling increases in her cost of living. “I went from living a comfortable lifestyle to I can’t afford anything anymore,” she said.

Jobs and the economy were the most important problem facing the country according to 20 percent of voters, with inflation and the cost of living (15 percent) close behind as prices are rising at the fastest rate in a generation. One in 10 voters named the state of American democracy and political division as the most pressing issue, about the same share who named gun policies, after several high-profile mass shootings.

More than 75 percent of voters in the poll said the economy was “extremely important” to them. And yet only 1 percent rated economic conditions as excellent. Among those who are typically working age — voters 18 to 64 years old — only 6 percent said the economy was good or excellent, while 93 percent rated it poor or only fair.

The White House has tried to trumpet strong job growth, including on Friday when Mr. Biden declared that he had overseen “the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history.” But the Times/Siena poll showed a vast disconnect between those boasts, and the strength of some economic indicators, and the financial reality that most Americans feel they are confronting.

“We used to spend $200 a week just going out to have fun, or going and buying extra groceries if we needed it, and now we can’t even do that,” said Kelly King, a former factory worker in Greensburg, Ind., who is currently sidelined because of a back injury. “We’re barely able to buy what we need.”

Ms. King, 38, said she didn’t know if Mr. Biden was necessarily to blame for the spiking prices of gas and groceries but felt he should be doing more to help. “I feel like he hasn’t really spoken much about it,” Ms. King said. “He hasn’t done what I think he’s capable of doing as president to help the American people. As a Democrat, I figured he would really be on our side and put us back on the right track. And I just feel like he’s not.”

Now, she said, she is hoping Republicans take over Congress in November to course-correct.

One glimmer of good news for Mr. Biden is that the survey showed him with a narrow edge in a hypothetical rematch in 2024 with former President Donald J. Trump: 44 percent to 41 percent.

The result is a reminder of one of Mr. Biden’s favorite aphorisms: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” The poll showed that Democratic misgivings about Mr. Biden seemed to mostly melt away when presented with a choice between him and Mr. Trump: 92 percent of Democrats said they would stick with Mr. Biden.

Randain Wright, a 41-year-old truck driver in Ocean Township, N.J., is typical of these voters. He said he talked frequently with friends about Mr. Biden’s shortcomings. “He’s just not aggressive enough in getting his agenda done,” Mr. Wright lamented. In contrast, he said, “Trump wasn’t afraid to get his people in line.”

But while he would prefer a different nominee in 2024, Mr. Wright said he still wouldn’t consider voting Republican in 2024 if faced with a Biden-Trump rematch.

On the whole, voters appeared to like Mr. Biden more than they like his performance as president, with 39 percent saying they have a favorable impression of him — six percentage points higher than his job approval.

In saying they wanted a different nominee in 2024, Democrats cited a variety of reasons, with the most in an open-ended question citing his age (33 percent), followed closely by unhappiness with how he is doing the job. About one in eight Democrats just said that they wanted someone new, and one in 10 said he was not progressive enough. Smaller fractions expressed doubts about his ability to win and his mental acuity.

The Times/Siena survey of 849 registered voters nationwide was conducted from July 5 to 7, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade , eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, which had been protected for half a century. The ruling sent Democrats into the streets and unleashed an outpouring of political contributions.

Typically, voters aligned with the party in power — Democrats now hold the House, the Senate and the White House — are more upbeat about the nation’s direction. But only 27 percent of Democrats saw the country as on the right track. And with the fall of Roe, there was a notable gender gap among Democrats: Only 20 percent of Democratic women said the country was moving in the right direction, compared with 39 percent of Democratic men.

Overall, abortion rated as the most important issue for 5 percent of voters: 1 percent of men, 9 percent of women.

Gun policies, following mass shootings in Buffalo, the Texas town of Uvalde and elsewhere, and the Supreme Court’s June 23 ruling striking down a New York law that placed strict limits on carrying guns outside the home, were ranked as the top issue by 10 percent of voters — far higher than has been typical of nationwide polls in recent years. The issue was of even greater importance to Black and Hispanic voters, ranking roughly the same as inflation and the cost of living, the survey found.

The coronavirus pandemic, which so thoroughly disrupted life at the end of the Trump administration and over the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, has largely receded from voters’ minds, the survey found. In an open-ended question, fewer than one percent of voters named the virus as the nation’s most important problem.

When Mr. Biden won in 2020, he made a point of trying to make inroads among working-class white voters who had abandoned the Democratic Party in droves in the Trump era. But whatever crossover appeal Mr. Biden once had appears diminished. His job approval rating among white voters without college degrees was a stark 20 percent.

John Waldron, a 69-year-old registered Republican and retired machinist in Schenectady, N.Y., voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. Today, he said, he regrets it and plans to vote Republican in 2024. “I thought he was going to do something for this country, but now he’s doing nothing,” Mr. Waldron said.

Like others, he expressed worries about Mr. Biden’s age and verbal flubs. On Friday, a clip of Mr. Biden at an event announcing an executive order on abortion went viral when he stumbled into saying “terminate the presidency” instead of “pregnancy,” for instance.

“You ever see him on TV?” Mr. Waldron said, comparing the president to zombies. “That’s what he looks like.”

Mr. Biden’s base, in 2020 and now, remains Black voters. They delivered the president a 62 percent job-approval rating — higher marks than any other race or ethnicity, age group or education level. But even among that constituency, there are serious signs of weakening. On the question of renominating Mr. Biden in 2024, slightly more Black Democratic voters said they wanted a different candidate than said they preferred Mr. Biden.

“Anybody could be doing a better job than what they’re doing right now,” said Clifton Heard, a 44-year-old maintenance specialist in Foley, Ala.

An independent, he said he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but is disillusioned over the state of the economy and the spiraling price of gas, and is now reconsidering Mr. Trump.

“I understand that they’ve got a tough job,” he said of Mr. Biden’s administration. “He wasn’t prepared to do the job.”

The Times/Siena nationwide survey was conducted by telephone using live operators. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Cross-tabs and methodology are available here .

Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.