When Bill Clinton and Barack Obama stood on stage with Joe Biden in New York last week, they agreed that voters had to make a clear decision in the November elections.
“I think our democracy is at stake,” Biden said at the fundraising event. ‘No joke. I think democracy is literally at stake.”
But an exclusive poll from DailyMail.com/JL Partners shows there is still work to be done if his campaign is to become a winning message.
Voters are more likely to say they remember a better economy during Donald Trump’s four years in office than the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol or four years of political drama.
Of the 1,005 likely voters, about 30 percent said they first thought about “a better economic situation.” In contrast, 20 percent said their top memory was January 6.
JL Partners asked 1,005 likely voters about their top memories of the Trump administration
A strong economy was the most important response, cited by 30 percent of respondents, beating out the January 6 attack, the pandemic response and other examples of chaos under Donald Trump
Democratic strategists said there were still seven months until the election and plenty of time for the Biden campaign to sharpen its message and refocus perception.
And a Biden campaign insider said a large number of voters seemed to remember negative things about Trump’s time in office, even when a healthy economy was top of mind.
Yet the results also show that the unrest of the street protests and Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic have faded from immediate memory.
Overall, 45 percent of respondents say their lives were better under Trump, compared to 38 percent under Biden.
While the numbers are split along partisan political lines, they are mirrored among independents, potentially including the tie-breaking votes that will determine the outcome of the election.
The result is that Trump has a four-point lead over Biden when respondents were asked who they would vote for if the election were held tomorrow.
James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners who conducted the poll, said Trump was winning the battle for memory.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given voters’ current concerns about economic pressures, they underestimated the political drama of the Trump years and focused on a time before the pandemic, when they still had money to spend.
Voters have a rosy view of life under Trump. In our survey, about 45 percent said life was better then than it is now under the Biden administration
As Biden took the stage with former Presidents Barack Obama (left) and Bill Clinton (right), they issued a joint statement saying democracy was at stake in the 2024 election
Independents were more divided than the overall population, with nearly a quarter saying their most important memory was the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“But it’s worth noting that this could change,” he said.
“The first presidential debate of 2020 mattered because it showed voters everything they saw as Trump’s worst side: aggressive, rude, prone to drama and chaos.
“It’s not unlikely that the campaign — or Biden’s ads — could remind voters of this.
“Trump may have won the battle for memory for now, but it’s a war that will last until Election Day and is an important metric we’ll be watching.”
The results deviate from party political lines.
Democrats remember the January 6 attack first (34 percent), followed by political drama (17 percent) and Trump investigations (13 percent). Only six percent mentioned a better economic situation.
First and foremost, Republicans (56 percent) say they remember a booming economy.
Independents split the difference. The economy is at the top (28 percent), but is closely followed by January 6 (22 percent).
WASHINGTON DC: Protesters dressed in black, carrying umbrellas and signs marched through the streets of Washington in the early hours after three arrests were made at the Capitol on election night
Flashback to June 2020 when Trump walked from the White House to the fire-damaged St. John’s Church. He previously promised a strong response to violent protests
JL Partners surveyed 1,000 likely voters from March 20 to 24 via landline, mobile phone, text message and apps. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent
Still, Biden has struggled in efforts to highlight his economic victories. His team has quietly put aside talk of “Bidenomics” after voters struggled to understand their claims that inflation had fallen when their daily groceries were even more expensive than under Trump.
The president used his recent State of the Union address, his biggest set speech of the year, to deliver a familiar message about democracy and the threat of an unnamed Trump.
“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under such attack here at home,” he told a joint session of Congress.
But he also took the time to explain how Americans would see improvements in their finances.
“I know the cost of housing is so important to you,” he said.
‘If inflation continues to fall, mortgage rates will also fall.’
Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins said there was time to change things. Voters, he added, often took a rosy view of presidents after they left office.
“I think now that Democrats have an opportunity to remind Americans what the Trump administration was like, the chaos that was his administration, the stability that we’ve now seen both in the global economy and in our democracy, I think that that is really the message. That will resonate with voters,” he said.
“Democrats understand this is a long game. Many of the messages will be a reminder of what things looked like.”
The Trump campaign and the Biden campaign declined to comment.