President Biden’s brutal, botch-filled night in Atlanta made an impression on people who watched the Democrat’s debate debacle.
That’s the takeaway from post-debate polling, including a snap canvass of viewers released Friday morning showing that by almost a 2-to-1 margin, people believe Donald Trump prevailed — and for Biden, Thursday may have been the night the lights went out in Georgia.
The YouGov poll of 3,119 adults conducted in the immediate wake of the CNN clash shows a meager 22% of respondents saying Biden won, with 43% saying the former president carried it, and an additional 35% somehow not sure what they thought.
That’s a marked contrast to commentators across the political spectrum currently mulling the mechanics of dumping the Delaware Democrat from the ticket.
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The gender split should be especially alarming for Biden.
Democrats rely on strong turnout from women voters, especially with reproductive rights being central to this year’s political discourse in a post-Dobbs world — yet just 19% of women think Biden won.
Speaking of Democrats, 47% of them think Biden bested the former president, while 16% of Dems think Trump triumphed.
That’s the good news.
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The bad news, and a particularly ominous portent given the outsize importance of swing voters in what has been until now a margin-of-error race, is that just 13% of independents think Biden won, compared with 40% who believe Trump did. Republicans picked Trump, as one would expect, by a robust 77% to 7% spread.
With the president’s age an issue, one interesting split is that respondents over the age of 45 (the highest-propensity voters) were particularly sour on Biden. Just 18% of those age 45 to 64 believe Biden won, and just 19% of those over the age of 65 do. Democrats can cling to one bit of cold comfort, though, as roughly a quarter of those under 45 think the president prevailed.
Every ethnic group also saw Trump as outperforming Biden.
Though Biden was most competitive with black respondents, with 25% of them saying the president won and 31% of them picking Trump, white people and Hispanics believe by more than a 2-to-1 margin that the former president carried the night.
Regionally, Biden was seen as most anemic by respondents in the South and Midwest, where 20% and 21%, respectively, said he won the debate.
His “best” regional showing? Twenty-seven percent in the Northeast, the only region where less than 40% said Trump won.
Follow the latest on Trump and Biden’s 2024 debate:
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Other data in the survey reflect Democratic unease, including just 74% of people from his own party saying Biden is more fit than Trump to be president, with 26% saying Trump or “not sure.” Trump doesn’t have this problem with his own party, meanwhile, with 86% of Republicans saying the former president is more fit than Biden.
And independents? By a 41% to 26% margin, they were in Trump’s camp when it came to the presidential fitness test.
The YouGov survey jibes with other post-debate polls that, as one would expect, were highlighted by MAGA, Inc. — the Trump-supportive super PAC.
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CNN’s post-debate flash poll found that “debate watchers say 67% to 33% that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday.” And a poll conducted by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that “68 percent said Donald Trump came out on top of the clash” and “some 30 percent of people who voted Biden in 2020 concluded that Trump won the debate.”
Finally, presidential prediction markets are pricing in Biden’s on-stage disaster, as evidenced by aggregation site Polymarket.
At this writing Friday morning, Trump is at 64% and Biden is just 19%, with Vice President Kamala Harris at 5% and former first lady Michelle Obama at 4%.
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Turning to the question of whether Biden drops out of the race, investors believe there’s a 43% chance. That number, unlike Biden’s chances in November, is surging, despite the campaign’s insistence that not only will he stay in the race, he’ll debate Trump again in September.
While the Biden camp continues to try to push the narrative that Thursday night had benefit for Biden with independent voters (according to what a Midnight Memo cryptically calls a “survey of undecided voters in a Midwest state”), Team Trump is issuing a more categorical read, as it attempts to capitalize on the president’s bad night.
“Biden on the other hand showed exactly why he deserves to be fired,” the campaign said. “Despite taking a week-long vacation at Camp David to prepare for the debate, Biden was unable to defend his disastrous record on the economy and the border. Throughout the debate Biden lied, invented stories, and could not articulate a single plan to make things less expensive and keep our people safe, choosing instead to change the subject and dwell on the past.
“Even worse, Biden couldn’t explain why he took a week of vacation at Camp David while 50 ISIS terrorists ran loose in our country. President Trump is spot-on when he says that if Joe Biden is too incompetent to stand trial, then Biden is too incompetent to be president.”
