Trump leads Biden by SIX POINTS: New national poll shows huge surge for ex-president – ​​but 25% of voters still undecided and 65% don’t want the rematch at all

Former President Donald Trump opened up a six-point lead over President Joe Biden in a new survey as the 2024 election moved toward a possible rematch after both men prevailed in the New Hampshire primary.

Trump’s lead over the incumbent president comes after he defeated Biden in a series of surveys, with both men having low approval ratings and voters expressing displeasure with both likely nominees.

Trump leads Biden by 40 to 34 percentage points in the new Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,250 adults.

A significant portion are unsure or plan to vote for someone else, introducing a potential wildcard into the race. But Trump’s lead holds even when third-party candidates are included.

Trump’s lead in the polls comes on a day when he went to court Thursday for his second defamation trial against E. Jean Carroll

It comes after Biden hammered Trump on abortion rights during a speech in Virginia this week, and Trump continued to label Biden as “crooked” even as he spent much of his victory speech in New Hampshire tearing into Republican rival Nikki Haley.

Biden is taking new steps with his campaign, sending trusted White House advisers Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon to Wilmington to help steer his reelection efforts.

Trump’s six-point lead represented a gain for him after a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month showed him and Biden tied, though a nationwide survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of the election contest that will be in just a handful this fall are decided. of competing states.

While Trump handily defeated his only remaining primary challenger, Haley, in New Hampshire on Tuesday, some 67 percent of respondents polled Monday through Wednesday said they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in the presidential election.” and want someone new.” Yet only 18 percent said they would not vote if Biden and Trump were their choice.

“I hate to think that we have to constantly navigate between the lesser of two evils,” Kimberly Sofge, a 56-year-old project manager in Washington, D.C., said this week. “I honestly feel like we can do better.”

President Joe Biden won the New Hampshire primary as a write-in. He is sending two top aides to his campaign

The two candidates themselves appear poised for a rematch after Trump’s back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, with the White House viewing Trump as a challenger to beat and Trump furious that Haley did not immediately drop out of the Republican race.

Trump’s lead held even when respondents were given the option to vote for third-party candidates, including anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with Trump receiving 36% support, Biden 30% and Kennedy 8%.

Just over half of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the American two-party system, while only one in four was satisfied with it.

Whitney Tallarico, 33, a consultant interviewed in Washington, is among those considering an alternative.

‘The independents don’t really have a voice. Polarizing characters tend to be at the forefront, and that’s kind of sad for our country,” Tallarico said this week. Asked whether she would vote for Biden or Trump, she said, “I’ll probably go third party.”

AGE PROBLEM

Overall, the poll gave numerous signals that voters are unhappy with their choices.

Seventy percent of respondents – including about half of Democrats – agreed with the statement that Biden should not seek re-election. Fifty-six percent of people who responded to the poll said Trump should not run for office, including about a third of Republicans.

Biden is troubled by the widespread view that at 81, already the oldest person to ever serve as US president, he is too old for the job.

Three-quarters of respondents agreed that Biden was too old to work in government, while half said the same about Trump, who at 77 would also be among the oldest American leaders ever if he returned to office. White House. Just over half of Democrats thought Biden was too old, while a third of Republicans viewed Trump that way.

Haley, 52, is trying to marshal discontent to turn around her well-financed but faltering campaign.

“Most Americans do not want a rematch between Biden and Trump,” she said on Tuesday after her loss to Trump in New Hampshire. “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate will be the party that wins these elections.”

The new poll showed Trump with a huge national lead over Haley — 64% to 19% — as they prepare for the Feb. 24 Republican nominating contest in South Carolina, which Haley led as governor from 2011-2017.

Turnout in the November general election could still be high, in part because voters from both parties are highly motivated to defeat the other side.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents who said they planned to vote for Biden said they were primarily motivated by opposition to Trump, while Trump voters were more positive about their candidate and his policies, with only 39% describing their vote as a vote against Biden.

Anti-Trump sentiment helped Biden defeat Trump in the 2020 election, when a record number of eligible voters cast ballots.

Another factor that could weigh on Trump: 55% of Republicans in the poll said he should be sentenced to prison if he broke the law. Trump, who currently faces four criminal charges, has argued in court that he should be immune from prosecution for actions he took while president.

To be fair, most Republicans don’t think he’s guilty; only one in five Republican respondents said it was credible that Trump had instigated election fraud, one of the top charges against him, and four in five said his political opponents were abusing the legal rules. system to derail his presidential bid.