President Joe Biden may be scratching back from the trailing position he held in polling through most of 2023, according to recent surveys, but with less than six months to go before the earliest voters are eligible to cast ballots, the polls show the 2024 race is neck and neck.
Biden leads former President Donald Trump by just two points — 44% to 42% — according to a Morning Consult poll of more than 6,000 registered voters released Tuesday, but only if they’re the only candidates on the ballot.
“The presumptive Republican nominee has rarely led Biden since the Super Tuesday primary contests, compared with consistent advantages he enjoyed throughout January and February. However, the race remains incredibly close, with 8% of voters threatening to vote third party and 5% undecided,” pollsters wrote.
Biden, according to the poll, is more popular than Trump for the first time since the start of the year, with the 46th President’s net favorability 6 points into the negative and the 45th President 8 points under water.
“This edge comes as Biden’s advantage over Trump on net buzz — the share of voters who heard something positive about each candidate minus the share who heard something negative — ticked up to 21 points, which is the largest margin since mid-November,” pollsters wrote.
The survey also shows that Republicans, as a whole, do better among those surveyed when it comes to the economy, national security, and immigration, while Democrats outperform regarding health care, entitlement programs, climate change, reproductive rights and abortion. The economy is top of mind among surveyed voters, according to pollsters.
“The economy remains voters’ top issue for the 2024 elections. And though the share who said it’s ‘very important’ in deciding their vote dropped during much of 2023, the economy’s salience has ticked back up in recent months,” they wrote.
The slight edge shown for the incumbent president in Tuesday’s poll matches a Quinnipiac University survey of 1,407 registered voters released last week, which shows Biden up by 3 points. That’s in line with polls put out by the university in February.
However, the same Quinnipiac poll once again showed that if voters are offered the chance to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, they pull enough of the vote to potentially give Trump the edge.
“Way too close to call on the head-to-head and even closer when third party candidates are counted. The backstretch is months away and this is about as close as it can get,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said with the release of that poll.
